BY    CHARLES    R.    HENDERSON 

SOCIAL    ELEMENTS 

I2mo.      $I.JJO  net 


"  Mr.  Henderson's  book  is  a  concise,  readable  presentation 
of  the  subject,  never  dogmatic,  but  marked  by  a  hopeful, 
sympathetic  spirit.  It  is  a  good  text-book  for  reading  cir- 
cles, in  that  it  aims  to  inspire  personal  reflection  and  discus- 
sion, and  it  ought  to  suit  the  needs  of  a  great  many  readers." 
— Journal  of  Education. 

"  It  is  a  matter  of  congratulation  that  a  book  of  this  kind 
has  been  written  by  a  man  who  believes  in  the  existence  and 
importance  of  the  spiritual  element  in  human  nature,  and  is 
not  afraid  to  speak  of  the  church  and  religion.  .  .  .  The 
suggestions,  in  the  Preface,  to  students  as  to  the  manner  of 
using  the  work,  and  the  directions,  in  the  Appendix,  for  local 
studies,  are  of  great  practical  value.  Readers  cannot  do  bet- 
ter than  to  adopt  and  follow  the  order  of  '  topics  for  papers 
and  discussions.'  " — TJie  American  Journal  of  Sociology. 

"  Professor  Henderson  has  also  given  a  distinctly  literary 
flavor  to  his  book,  not  only  by  crowding  his  pages  with  the 
noble  thoughts  of  the  poets  and  prose  writers  of  all  ages  and 
of  every  nation,  but  by  having  a  care  to  his  own  thought, 
giving  it  beauty  of  form  as  well  as  strength  of  substance. 
This  does  not  mean  that  he  has  attempted  any  of  that  '  fina 
writing '  which  disfigures,  but  that  he  has  chosen  his  words 
and  phrases  with  that  simplicity  which  gives  elegance  to  his 
style  and  pleasure  to  his  readers;  he  has  not  forgotten  that 
books  are  written  to  be  read,  and  that  the  aim  of  an  author 
should  be  to  have  his  thoughts  easily  understood."  —  ?^  Dial, 


THE   CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC 
ECONOMY  OF  LARGE  TOWNS 


THE    CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC 
ECONOMY   OF   LARGE    TOWNS 


BY 

THOMAS  CHALMERS,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

ABRIDGED   AND   WITH    AN   INTRODUCTION    BY 

CHARLES    R.    HENDERSON 

PROFESSOR  OF   SOCIOLOGY,   UNIVERSITY   OF  CHICAGO 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
1900 


COPYRIGHT,  1900,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


TROW  DIRECTORY 

PRINTING  AND  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC 
ECONOMY  OF  LARGE  TOWNS 

PAGE 

I.    BIOGRAPHICAL      .........       1 

II.   ANALYSIS    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    AND   Civic    ECONOMY    OF 

LARGE  TOWNS  AND  OF  THE  POLITICAL  ECONOMY        .      8 

III.  CRITICISM  OF  CERTAIN  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  CHALMERS  .    24 

IV.  SOME  OF  THE  IMPORTANT  CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  DR.  CHAL- 

MERS TO  MODERN  SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS  OF  THOUGHT 
AND  ACTION  .  .  .         .     53 


THE  CHRISTIAN  AND   CIVIC  ECONOMY  OF  LARGE 
TOWNS 

PREFACE 79 

VOLUME  I 

CHAPTER 

I.    THE    ADVANTAGE    AND    POSSIBILITY    OF    ASSIMILATING    A 

TOWN  TO  A  COUNTRY  PARISH 81 

II.   ON  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  LOCALITY  IN  TOWNS       .        .        .98 

III.    APPLICATION  OF  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  LOCALITY  IN  TOWNS 

TO  THE  WORK  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  MINISTER  .         .        .112 
vii 


2004321 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IV.    THE   EFFECT   OF  LOCALITY   IN   ADDING  TO   THE   USEFUL 

ESTABLISHMENTS  OF  A  TOWN 122 

V.  ON  CHURCH  PATRONAGE 134 

VI.  ON  CHURCH  PATRONAGE,  CONTINUED        ....  143 

VII.  ON  CHURCH  OFFICES 148 

VIII.  ON  SABBATH-SCHOOLS  .  164 


VOLUME  II 

IX.   ON  THE  EELATION  THAT  SUBSISTS  BETWEEN  THE  CHRIS- 
TIAN AND  THE  Oivic  ECONOMY  OF  LARGE  TOWNS     .  181 

X.    ON  THE  BEARING  WHICH  A  RIGHT  CHRISTIAN  ECONOMY 

HAS  UPON  PAUPERISM         ......  188 

XI.   ON  THE  BEARING  WHICH  A  EIGHT  Civic  ECONOMY  HAS 

UPON  PAUPERISM 204 

XII.    ON    THE    PRESENT    STATE    AND   FUTURE    PROSPECTS    OF 

PAUPERISM  IN  GLASGOW     ......  219 

XIII.  ON  THE  DIFFICULTIES   AND   EVILS  WHICH   ADHERE  EVEN 

TO  THE  BEST  CONDITION  OF  SCOTTISH  PAUPERISM     .  228 

XIV.  ON  THE  LIKELIEST  MEANS   FOR  THE  ABOLITION  OF  PAU- 

PERISM IN  ENGLAND   .......  239 

XV.    ON    THE    LIKELIEST    PARLIAMENTARY    MEANS    FOR    THE 

ABOLITION  OF  PAUPERISM  IN  ENGLAND       .         .         .  249 

XVI.    ON   THE  LIKELIEST   PAROCHIAL  MEANS  FOR  THE  ABOLI- 
TION OF  PAUPERISM  IN  ENGLAND  .        .  260 


CONTENTS 


VOLUME  III 

PAGE 

PREFACE 2G9 

CHAPTER 

XVII.    ON  THE  WAGES  OF  LABOR 271 

XVIII.    ON  THE   EFFECT  OF  A  POOR-RATE,  WHEN  APPLIED  IN 

AID  OF  DEFECTIVE  WAGES 284 

XIX.   ON  SAVINGS-BANKS 297 

XX.    ON  THE  COMBINATIONS  OF  WORKMEN  FOR  THE  PURPOSE 

OF  RAISING  WAGES  .......  30C 

XXI.   THE  SAME  SUBJECT  CONTINUED      .         .         .         .         .314 

XXII.  ON  CERTAIN  PREVALENT  ERRORS  AND  MISCONCEPTIONS 
WHICH  ARE  FOSTERED  BY  ECONOMIC  THEORIES,  AND 
WHICH  ARE  FITTED  TO  MISLEAD  THE  LEGISLATURE 
IN  REGARD  TO  LABOR  AND  THE  LABORING  CLASSES  324 

XXIII.  ON  THE  EFFECT  WHICH  THE  HIGH  PRICE  OF  LABOR  IN 

A  COUNTRY  HAS  UPON  ITS  FOREIGN  TRADE      .         .  329 

XXIV.  ON   MECHANIC   SCHOOLS,   AND    ON   POLITICAL   ECONOMY 

AS  A  BRANCH  OF  POPULAR  EDUCATION  .  333 


PREFATORY  NOTE  OF  THE  EDITOR 

IN  the  collection  and  examination  of  the  materials  and 
references  for  the  Introduction,  especially  in  relation  to 
the  Scottish  Poor  Law,  I  wish  to  gratefully  acknowledge 
the  kind  help  of  Rev.  W.  C.  MacNaul,  D.B.,  Mr.  Hew 
Morrison,  of  the  Edinburgh  Public  Library,  and  of  A.  "VV. 
Smith,  Esq.,  Edinburgh. 

In  regard  to  the  treatment  of  the  text  of  "  The  Chris- 
tian and  Civic  Economy  of  Large  Towns  "  it  should  be 
said,  that  the  body  of  the  book  is  copied  carefully  from 
a  text  printed  at  Glasgow  by  William  Collins;  that  the 
text  is  simply  a  reproduction  of  the  exact  words  of  that 
edition ;  that  omissions  due  to  the  frequent  repetitions  of 
the  author  or  to  merely  local  and  transitory  interest  are 
indicated;  that  no  important  idea  is  omitted,  but  only 
illustrations ;  that  the  bracketed  additions  are  designed  to 
indicate  the  transitional  thoughts  or  to  explain  some  point 
which  might  otherwise  be  left  in  obscurity. 

The  material  presented  in  the  Introduction  is  intended 
to  be  a  criticism  of  the  obsolete  doctrines  of  the  author 
and  an  appreciation  of  those  teachings  which  have  con- 
temporary interest.  If  the  reader  prefers  to  agree  with 
the  author  rather  than  with  the  editor,  he  will  do  so  at 
least  upon  information  and  consideration  of  a  different 
standpoint. 

C.  R  H. 


INTRODUCTION   TO    THE    CHRISTIAN 

AND  CIVIC  ECONOMY  OF 

LARGE  TOWNS 

I 
BIOGKAPHICAL 

THOMAS  CHALMEES  was  born  March  17,  1780,  and 
died  May  30,  1847.  His  public  life  covered  nearly  all 
of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  At  the  age 
of  eleven  years  we  find  him.  at  the  University  of  St. 
Andrews.  During  this  period  he  gave  most  of  his  at- 
tention to  mathematics.  Later  (1799-1800)  he  attended 
lectures  at  Edinburgh  under  Stewart,  Playfair,  Robison, 
and  Hope.  His  ordination  occurred  in  1803,  and  his 
first  pastoral  service  was  in  the  rural  parish  of  Kilmany. 
He  taught  mathematics  to  enthusiastic  classes  during  the 
week  and  preached  on  Sundays.  At  one  time  he  gave 
popular  lectures  on  chemistry.  He  aspired  to  a  chair  as 
teacher  of  mathematics  at  Edinburgh  (1805),  but  failed 
in  this  ambition.  His  early  interest  in  economic  and 
political  problems  is  evidenced  by  the  publication  (1808) 
of  an  "  Enquiry  into  the  Extent  and  Stability  of  National 

Resources." 

1 


2  INTRODUCTION 

Bereavement  and  personal  illness  turned  his  thoughts 
into  new  channels  and  deepened  his  spiritual  insight.  His 
article  on  Christianity,  published  in  the  "  Edinburgh  En- 
cyclopaedia," marks  a  stage  in  his  personal  development. 
His  preaching  became  more  evangelical,  powerful,  and 
earnest.  In  1815  he  was  elected  by  the  Town  Council 
of  Glasgow,  by  a  bare  majority,  and  after  intense  oppo- 
sition on  the  part  of  certain  politicians  and  ecclesiastics, 
as  pastor  of  Tron  church  and  parish,  and  he  at  once  be- 
came popular  as  a  preacher.  The  antagonism  shown  to 
him  at  the  time  of  his  election,  and  the  political  hin- 
drances thrown  in  his  way  by  civil  officers  opened  his  eyes 
to  the  evils  of  an  ecclesiastical  establishment;  but  it  re- 
quired the  bitter  experiences  of  many  more  years  to  cause 
him  to  break  the  fetters  which  galled  him  and  impeded 
his  labors. 

His  intense  evangelical  spirit  and  his  conscientious  de- 
votion to  pastoral  service  did  not  choke  his  abiding  interest 
in  natural  science.  While  he  toiled  among  the  poor  and 
depraved,  he  kept  in  touch  with  university  men  and  their 
intellectual  interests.  In  1817  he  gave  to  the  world  his 
famous  "  Astronomical  Discourses." 

He  was  transferred  to  the  parish  of  St.  John's  in  1819, 
and  during  his  ministry  there  he  published  a  series  of 
articles  which  came  to  form  a  book  entitled  "  The  Chris- 
tian and  Civic  Economy  of  Large  Towns."  This  book, 
not  completed  until  1826,  is  republished  in  this  volume 
in  a  condensed  form. 

In  1823  Chalmers  returned  to  academic  life  as  pro- 
fessor of  moral  philosophy  in  the  University  of  St.  An- 


CHALMERS'    BIOGRAPHY  3 

drews.  While  he  occupied  this  office  he  published  (1827) 
his  treatise  on  "  The  Use  and  Abuse  of  Literary  and 
Ecclesiastical  Endowments."  While  he  was  still  at  St. 
Andrews  he  began  a  series  of  lectures  to  students  and 
pastors  on  economic  subjects  which  were  afterwards 
(1832)  published  under  the  title  "  Political  Economy." 

He  was  appointed  professor  of  theology  at  Edinburgh 
in  1828.  In  1833  he  published  one  of  the  Bridgewater 
treatises  "  On  the  Adaptation  of  External  ISTature  to  the 
Moral  and  Intellectual  Constitution  of  Man." 

The  organizing  and  administrative  ability  of  the  man 
was  already  well  known,  and  in  the  years  1834-1841  he 
led,  with  persuasive  and  commanding  eloquence,  the 
movement  which  issued  in  adding  to  the  resources  of  the 
state  church  £300,000  and  220  new  edifices. 

For  many  years  Chalmers  had  felt  the  pressure  of  po- 
litical interference  with  the  appointment  of  pastors  and 
the  conduct  of  parishes.  All  this  time  he  had  loyally 
defended  the  Establishment,  had  believed  that  it  could 
be  made  a  means  of  spiritual  blessing  to  Scotland,  and 
that  its  defects  could  be  remedied  by  reforms  within  the 
body.  But  at  last  he  came  to  the  conviction  that  the 
struggle  to  secure  an  earnest  ministry  by  political  ap- 
pointment cost  too  much  effort  and  contest.  He  had 
also  learned  that  the  voluntary  liberality  of  earnest  faith 
may  be  counted  on  to  give  generous  resources  for  the 
support  of  a  faithful  ministry.  Even  while  he  was  yet 
a  prominent  figure  in  the  state  church  he  had  shown  a 
liberal  and  courteous  spirit  toward  dissenters,  and  at  one 
time  went  so  far  as  to  take  a  pew  for  his  family  in  a 


4  INTRODUCTION 

chapel  at  St.  Andrews,  where  a  simple  and  pure  gospel 
was  preached  and  taught.  At  last  Chalmers  found  the 
yoke  of  legal  authority  too  heavy  for  him,  and,  on  a  mem- 
orable day,  May  18,  1843,  in  company  with  four  hundred 
and  seventy  other  clergymen,  he  withdrew  from  the 
church  of  his  fathers  and  of  his  beloved  country,  and 
they  formed  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland.  In  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  of  this  body  Dr.  Chalmers  became  the  first 
moderator.  He  planned  and  worked,  with  great  success, 
for  the  raising  of  a  fund  to  support  and  promote  the  work 
of  this  denomination,  whose  first  ministers  gave  up  manses 
and  church  edifices,  and  all  the  material  advantages  of 
their  former  connection  with  the  state,  for  the  sake  of  a 
principle. 

From  the  books  cited  below,  and  especially  those  of 
Hanna  and  Blaikie,  this  bare  outline  may  be  filled  out. 
Enough  has  been  here  set  down  to  indicate  the  honors 
and  the  confidence  shown  to  him  by  his  contemporaries, 
and  to  suggest  the  value  of  his  deliberate  expression  of 
convictions  and  the  reasons  on  which  they  were  based. 

One  of  the  latest  undertakings  of  Chalmers  was  so 
characteristic  that  a  brief  statement  of  the  famous  en- 
terprise may  be  useful  at  this  point.  "When  age  had  be- 
gun to  tell  on  his  strength,  and  he  was  full  of  the  cares 
of  a  professorship,  he  sought  to  demonstrate  once  more 
the  value  of  the  social  theory  of  his  life-work.  July 
26,  1844,  fourteen  months  after  the  great  Disruption, 
he  wrote  to  Mr.  Lenox,  of  New  York,  founder  of  Len- 
ox Library:  "I  have  determined  to  assume  a  poor  dis- 
trict of  2,000  people  and  superintend  it  myself,  though 


CHALMERS'    BIOGRAPHY  5 

it  be  a  work  greatly  too  much  for  my  declining  strength 
and  means.  Yet  such  do  I  hold  to  be  the  efficiency  of 
the  method  with  the  divine  blessing  that,  perhaps,  as 
the  concluding  act  of  my  public  life,  I  shall  make  the 
effort  to  exemplify  what  as  yet  I  have  only  expounded." 

He  would  make  that  work  simply  Christian  and  human, 
not  sectarian.  "  Who  cares  about  the  Free  Church  com- 
pared with  the  Christian  good  of  Scotland?  Who  cares 
about  any  church  but  as  an  instrument  of  Christian 
good?  For  be  assured  that  the  moral  and  religious  well- 
being  of  the  population  is  of  infinitely  higher  importance 
than  the  advancement  of  any  sect." 

Of  this  West-Port  (Edinburgh)  experiment  Dr.  Blaikie 
says:  "  The  district  selected  was  of  the  worst  description 
— a  fourth  part  of  the  population  being  paupers,  and  an- 
other fourth  street  beggars,  thieves,  and  prostitutes.  The 
population  amounted  to  upward  of  400  families,  of  whom 
300  had  no  connection  with  any  church.  Of  411  chil- 
dren of  school  age,  290  were  growing  up  without  any 
education. 

"  The  plan  of  Dr.  Chalmers  was  to  divide  the  whole 
territory  into  twenty  districts,  containing  each  about 
twenty  families.  To  each  district  a  visitor  was  appointed, 
whose  duty  was  to  visit  each  family  once  a  week,  under 
directions  printed  by  Dr.  Chalmers  to  show  the  specific 
object  of  the  visitation.  A  school  was  provided,  and 
the  visitors  were  instructed,  in  the  first  instance,  to  show 
an  active  interest  in  the  young,  and  exhort  their  parents 
to  send  their  children  to  the  school.  A  small  fee  was 
exacted,  on  the  principle  that  what  was  paid  for  would 


G  INTRODUCTION 

be  more  valued,  and  that  a  more  regular  attendance  would 
be  secured.  The  visitors  were  instructed  to  meet  with 
Dr.  Chalmers  every  Saturday  evening,  the  first  meeting 
to  take  place  in  July,  1844." 

Public  worship  was  opened  in  a  tan-loft.  In  1845 
Rev.  W.  Tasker  was  secured  as  a  missionary  minister. 
A  library,  a  savings  bank,  a  washing-house,  and  a  female 
industrial  school  were  added  to  the  parochial  equipments. 
The  church  came  to  number  1,300  communicants.  It 
has  often  been  imitated.  The  "  institutional  "  churches 
have  copied  many  features,  and  social  settlements  have 
received  suggestive  impulses  from  the  same  source.  The 
territorial  principle  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  parish  work. 
The  district  visitor  and  the  scheme  of  co-operation  are 
factors  in  the  Elberf eld  system  of  German  municipal  poor 
relief,  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  in  Great  Brit- 
ain and  America,  of  the  Federation  of  Churches,  and  of 
the  earlier  experiments  of  the  Evangelical  Alliance  in 
the  United  States. 

These  enterprises  of  Chalmers  attracted  the  attention 
and  won  the  admiration  of  Carlyle,  who  said :  "  What  a 
wonderful  old  man  Chalmers  is !  or,  rather,  he  has  all  the 
buoyancy  of  youth.  When  so  many  of  us  are  wringing 
our  hands  in  hopeless  despair  over  the  vileness  and 
wretchedness  of  the  large  towns,  there  goes  the  old  man, 
shovel  in  hand,  down  into  the  dirtiest  puddles  of  the 
West-Port  of  Edinburgh,  cleans  them  out,  and  fills  the 
sewers  with  living  waters.  It  is  a  beautiful  sight." 


CHALMERS'    BIOGRAPHY  7 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A  few  selected  titles  are  given  here  for  those  who  wish 
to  learn  more  of  the  life  and  work  of  our  author.  Fur- 
ther references  will  be  found  in  the  book  of  Professor 
Blaikie. 

Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Thomas  Chalmers.  By  W. 
Hanna. 

Thomas  Chalmers.     By  W.  G.  Blaikie.     New  York,  1897. 

Zwei  Biicher  zur  socialen  Geschichte  Englands.  By  A.  Held.  Leip- 
zig, 1881.  S.  233. 


n 

ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  AND  CIV- 
IC ECONOMY  OF  LAKGE  TOWNS  AND  OF 
THE  POLITICAL  ECONOMY 

THE    CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC   ECONOMY    OF    LARGE 
TOWNS 

THE  theme  of  this  work  touches  the  essence  of  Chal- 
mers' own  life :  the  social  welfare  of  the  laboring  classes ; 
the  obstacles  to  that  welfare ;  the  means  of  promoting  it. 

Chapter  I. — Religion  and  science  should  be  united  in 
the  service  of  man. — Institutions  are  important  to  happi- 
ness and  character.  The  country  parishes  of  Scotland 
present  certain  advantages  and  produce  a  worthy  type 
of  character.  The  city  parish  may  be  so  organized  as 
to  secure  these  advantages.  We  must  provide  for  a  nu- 
merous and  well-appointed  agency.  The  power  of  per- 
sonal influence  must  be  felt.  Ministers  of  the  church 
should  be  free  from  the  excessive  burdens  of  varied  secu- 
lar offices  that  they  may  have  time  and  energy  for  their 
specific,  intellectual,  and  practical  duties. 

Chapter  II. — On  the  influence  of  locality  in  towns. — 
Most  philanthropic  societies  err  in  seeking  to  cover  a 
whole  city  by  one  scheme.  It  were  better  for  an  asso- 
ciation to  attack  a  small  area  and  till  it  thoroughly.  If 


CHALMERS'    TEACHINGS    ANALYZED  9 

a  successful  and  fruitful  plan  has  demonstrated  its  value 
in  a  limited  district  it  will  be  imitated,  and  at  last  the 
entire  city  will  be  covered. 

Chapter  III. — Application  of  the  principle  of  locality 
to  the  work  of  a  Christian  minister. — An  argument  for 
a  state  church  based  on  the  ground  that  people  need  but 
do  not  desire  religion  and  education.  Material  goods 
they  do  desire  and  will  voluntarily  seek.  The  church 
policy  of  emanation  is  superior  to  the  passive  policy  of 
attraction. 

Chapter  IV. — The  effect  of  locality  in  adding  to  the 
useful  establishments  of  a  town,  and  especially  in  respect 
to  schools  for  the  laboring  classes. — Gifts  for  popular 
education  are  the  best  form  of  charity. 

Chapters  Y.  and  VI. — On  church  patronage. — The 
popular  religious  taste  for  evangelical  doctrine  is  sound, 
and  should  be  regarded  by  those  persons  who  have  legal 
power  to  appoint  pastors.  The  competition  of  sects  is 
not  altogether  an  evil.  Dissenters  should  be  treated  with 
tolerance,  since  they  spur  the  Established  Church  to  its 
duty.  Germs  of  the  social  settlement  idea  are  found 
here. 

Chapter  VII. — On  church  offices. — The  organization 
of  Scottish  churches.  Objections  to  a  fund  for  the  poor. 
The  modern  idea  of  friendly  visitors  finely  treated. 

Chapter  VIII. — On  Sabbath  schools. — Their  function 
and  relation  to  family  and  church.  The  social  settlement 
idea  again. 

Chapter  IX. — On  the  relation  between  the  Christian 
and  the  civic  economy  of  large  towns. — The  same  relig- 


10  INTRODUCTION 

ious  ministrations  which  Christianize  and  spiritualize  a 
few  do  more  obviously  and  on  a  wide  scale  refine  and 
civilize. 

Chapter  X. — On  the  bearing  which  a  right  Christian 
economy  has  upon  pauperism. — Objections  to  out-door 
official  relief,  by  church  or  state :  chiefly  because  it  tends 
to  suppress  the  graces  and  virtues. 

Chapter  XI. — On  the  bearing  which  a  right  civic  econ- 
omy has  upon  pauperism. — Criticism  of  centralized  ad- 
ministration of  relief.  Plea  for  a  close  neighborhood 
bond  between  almoner  and  people.  St.  John's  parish 
experiment. 

Chapter  XII. — On  the  present  state  and  future  pros- 
pects of  pauperism  in  Glasgow. — The  idea  of  the  more 
recent  Charity  Organization  Society  and  its  fundamental 
principles. 

Chapter  XIII. — On  the  difficulties  and  evils  which 
adhere  even  to  the  best  condition  of  Scottish  pauperism. 
• — Illustrations  from  the  "  Gorbals  "  at  Glasgow. 

Chapter  XIV. — On  the  likeliest  means  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  pauperism  (that  is,  out-door  official  relief)  in  Eng- 
land.— Evils  of  the  English  Poor  Law.  Out-door  official 
relief  is  both  unnecessary  and  hurtful.  Mitigation  of  its 
evils  not  possible.  Gradual  abolition  the  only  remedy. 

Chapter  XV. — On  the  likeliest  parliamentary  means 
for  the  abolition  of  pauperism  in  England. — Law  should 
simply  permit  localities  to  try  the  experiment  of  aboli- 
tion. A  form  of  referendum  recommended. 

Chapter  XVI. — On  the  likeliest  parochial  means  for 
the  abolition  of  pauperism  in  England. — Practically, 


CHALMEKS'    TEACHINGS    ANALYZED  11 

Charity  Organization  Society  methods  in  parishes  which 
had  voted  for  abolition. 

Chapter  XVII. — On  the  wages  of  labor. — We  pass 
at  this  point  from  the  consideration  of  paupers  to  the 
economic  conditions  of  the  wage-earning  class.  Adopting 
the  "  wage  fund  theory  "  of  his  day,  the  author  traces 
a  clear  mathematical  ratio  between  the  supply  of  laborers 
and  the  demand  for  them.  Accepting  the  doctrine  of 
Malthus,  he  teaches  that  a  small  surplus  of  laborers  will 
produce  a  great  fall  in  wages;  and  that  a  small  defi- 
ciency in  the  supply  of  laborers  will  cause  a  considerable 
rise  in  wages.  Hence  the  "  lower  classes  "  can  control 
the  rate  of  wages  by  marrying  later  and  having  smaller 
families. 

Chapter  XVIII. — On  the  effect  of  a  poor  rate,  when 
applied  in  aid  of  defective  wages. — It  increases  the  num- 
ber of  the  dependent,  encourages  early  marriages,  and 
induces  idleness,  vice,  and  revolt. 

Chapter  XIX. — On  savings  banks. — A  fund  in  hand 
enables  the  workmen  to  hold  out  for  better  wages. 

Chapters  XX.  and  XXI. — On  the  combinations  of 
workmen  for  the  purpose  of  raising  wages. — His  doctrine 
of  the  wage  fund  led  Chalmers  to  believe  that  combina- 
tions cannot  affect  the  rate  of  wages.  But  he  deprecated 
the  legal  suppression  of  trades-unions.  Non-union  men 
must  be  protected  by  police  if  they  choose  to  work  for 
wages  offered. 

Chapter  XXII. — On  certain  prevalent  errors  which  are 
fostered  by  economic  theories. — There  is  no  danger  that 
combinations  of  laborers  will  too  greatly  reduce  the  sup- 


12  INTRODUCTION 

ply  of  labor  or  drive  capital  from  the  country.  Economic 
forces  are  too  strong  for  artificial  unions. 

Chapter  XXIII. — On  the  effect  which  the  high  price 
of  labor  in  a  country  has  upon  its  foreign  trade. — The- 
ory of  international  trade.  No  real  manufacturing  or 
commercial  interest  will  suffer  because  workmen  are  well 
paid. 

Chapter  XXIV. — On  mechanic  schools,  and  on  politi- 
cal economy  as  a  branch  of  education. — Popular  educa- 
tion, especially  in  economics,  tends  to  pacify  rather  than 
to  excite  working  people.  When  they  see  that  strikes  do 
no  good  they  will  seek  other  means  of  bettering  their 
condition.  They  will  act  on  the  advice  of  Malthus  and 
limit  their  numbers  in  order  to  raise  their  wages. 

Professor  Blaikie  sums  up  the  social  teaching  of  Chal- 
mers in  these  words:  "  On  the  basis  of  the  gospel,  he 
could  not  separate  the  social  from  the  personal,  the  gen- 
eral from  the  particular,  the  temporal  from  the  spiritual. 
He  had  always  an  Arcadia,  a  Utopia,  a  new  spring-tide 
of  his  country  in  his  vista ;  but  a  spring-tide  to  be  realized 
in  one  way  only — by  the  coming  of  the  spirit  from  on 
high." 

POLITICAL  ECONOMY 

Before  offering  criticisms  and  estimates  of  the  social 
teachings  of  the  volume  here  presented,  it  will  be  well 
to  consider  the  system  of  economic  thought  which  grew 
up  in  the  mind  of  Chalmers.  Fortunately,  we  have  a 
synopsis  of  this  system  in  the  very  words  of  our  author. 


CHALMEKS'   TEACHINGS   ANALYZED  13 

It  is  found  in  his  work  on  "  Political  Economy,"  pub- 
lished in  1832: 

"  It  has  not  been  our  object  to  deliver  a  regular  sys- 
tem of  political  economy.  It  has  been  to  establish  the 
following  specific  proposition :  That  no  economic  enlarge- 
ments in  the  wealth  and  resources  of  a  country  can  ensure 
aught  like  a  permanent  comfort  or  sufficiency  to  the  fami- 
lies of  a  land.  Followed  up  as  these  enlargements  are 
by  a  commensurate,  or  generally  by  an  over-passing,  in- 
crease of  the  population,  the  country,  while  becoming 
richer  in  the  aggregate,  may  continue  to  teem  with  as 
great,  perhaps  a  greater,  amount  of  individual  distress 
and  penury  than  in  the  humble  and  earlier  days  of  her 
history.  In  these  circumstances  the  highway  to  our  secure 
and  stable  prosperity  is  not  so  much  to  enlarge  the  limit 
of  our  external  means  as  so  to  restrain  the  numbers  of 
the  population  that  they  shall  not  press  too  hard  upon 
that  limit.  But  the  only  way  of  rightly  accomplishing 
this  is  through  the  medium  of  a  higher  self-respect  and 
higher  taste  for  the  comforts  and  decencies  of  life  among 
the  people  themselves.  It  is  only  a  moral  and  voluntary 
restraint  that  should  be  aimed  at,  or  that  can  be  at  all 
effectual — the  fruit,  not  of  any  external  or  authoritative 
compulsion,  but  of  their  own  spontaneous  and  collective 
will.  This  is  evidently  not  the  achievement  of  a  day, 
but  the  slow  product  of  education,  working  insensibly, 
yet  withal  steadily  and  surely,  on  the  habits  and  inclina- 
tions of  the  common  people;  begetting  a  higher  cast  of 
character,  and,  as  the  unfailing  consequence  of  this,  a 
higher  standard  of  enjoyment;  the  effect  of  which  will 


14  INTRODUCTION 

be  more  provident,  and  hence  both  later  and  fewer,  mar- 
riages. Without  this  expedient  no  possible  enlargement 
of  the  general  wealth  can  enlarge  the  individual  comfort 
of  families;  but,  as  in  China,  we  shall  behold  a  general 
want  and  wretchedness  throughout  the  mass  of  society. 
With  this  expedient,  no  limitation  in  the  way  of  further 
increase  to  our  wealth  will  depress  the  condition,  though 
it  will  restrain  the  number  of  our  families;  but,  as  in 
Norway,  we  shall  behold  the  cheerful  spectacle  of  a  thriv- 
ing, independent,  and  respectable  peasantry." 

The  leading  principles  of  the  economic  theory  are  thus 
stated : 

1.  The  division  of  the  laboring  population  into  the  agri- 
cultural, the  secondary,  and  the  disposable.     .     .     .    ~No 
ground  will  be  cultivated  (unless  by  the  interference  of 
some  artificial  and  compulsory  legislation)  that  is  not  at 
least  able  to  feed  the  agricultural  population  employed 
on  it,  and  their  secondaries.    Hence  the  higher  the  stand- 
ard of  enjoyment  is  among  the  people  at  large,  the  greater 
will  be  the  secondary,  and  the  less  will  be  the  disposable 
class;    or,  corresponding  to  this,  the  greater  will  be  the 
wages,  and  the  less  will  be  the  rent,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  the  more  limited  will  be  the  cultivation,  because  of 
the  larger  produce  that  will  be  required  from  the  soil  last 
entered  on,  to  feed  the  larger  number  of  secondaries. 

2.  That  the  great  aim  of  every  enlightened  philan- 
thropist and  patriot  is  to  raise  the  standard  of  enjoyment, 
even  though  it  should  somewhat  lessen  the  rent  and  some- 
what limit  the  cultivation. 

3.  That  there  is  no  other  method  by  which  wages  can 


CHALMERS'    TEACHINGS    ANALYZED  15 

be  kept  permanently  high  than  by  the  operation  of  the 
moral  preventive  check  among  the  working  classes  of  so- 
ciety; and  that  this  can  only  be  secured  by  elevating 
their  standard  of  enjoyment,  through  the  means  both  of 
common  and  Christian  education. 

4.  That  however  menacing  the   aspect  of  a   policy 
whose  object  is  to  raise  the  condition  of  the  working 
classes  may  have  on  the  interest  of  the  landlords,  by 
encroaching  on  the  rent  of  land,  yet  they  have  a  security 
for  a  great  and  growing  revenue  notwithstanding.     Such, 
in  the  first  place,  is  the  strength  of  the  principle  of  popu- 
lation, that  there  is  no  danger  but  wages  will  be  kept 
sufficiently  low,  and  cultivation  be  carried  down  among 
the  inferior  soils  sufficiently  far.    And  besides,  every  im- 
provement in  the  methods  of  husbandry,  by  lessening  the 
agricultural  population  needed  for  the  work  of  farms — 
and  every  improvement  in  the  powers  of  manufacturing 
industry,  by  lessening  the  population  needed  for  prepar- 
ing the  second  necessaries  of  life — will  serve  to  increase 
the  disposable  population  who  are  at  the  service  of  the 
landlords,  and,  along  with  this,  the  rent  out  of  which 
this  third  class  of  laborers  is  maintained.     The  improve- 
ments which  are  ever  taking  place  in  the  powers  of  labor 
will  greatly  more  than  countervail  any  diminution  ef- 
fected by  the  moral  check  on  the  number  of  laborers. 

5.  That  high  wages  are  not  necessarily  confined  to  the 
period  when  the  wealth  of  society  is  in  a  state  of  pro- 
gressive increase;   and  neither  does  it  follow  that,  when 
this  wealth  has  attained  its  maximum,  and  become  sta- 
tionary, the  wages  of  labor  must  be  low.    That  it  remains 


16  INTRODUCTION 

in  the  collective  power  of  laborers  to  sustain  their  wages 
at  as  high  a  level  in  the  ultimate  as  in  the  progressive 
stages  of  the  wealth  of  a  country.  That  the  moral  pre- 
ventive check  on  population  can  achieve  and  perpetuate 
this  result;  but  nothing  else  will  do  it. 

6.  That  in  every  country,  where  the  laws  are  efficient 
and  equitable,  and  the  people  are  industrious,  the  culti- 
vation of  the  soil  will,  under  the  guidance  of  personal 
interest  and  enterprise,  be  carried  to  the  extreme  limit 
of  its  being  profitable. 

7.  That  this  contemplation  suggests  two  distinct  limits 
— one,  the  extreme  limit  of  a  profitable,  another  the  ex- 
treme limit  of  a  possible,  cultivation.     That,  by  abstain- 
ing from  schemes  of  pauperism,  and,  instead  of  these, 
giving  the  whole  strength  and  wisdom  of  government  to 
the  best  schemes  of  popular  education,  we  shall  keep 
within  the  former  limit;    and,  with  an  untouched  dis- 
posable population,  whether  for  the  luxury  of  proprietors, 
or  for  the  public  objects  of  a  sound  and  enlightened  pa- 
triotism, we  may  have,  at  the  same  time,  the  general  pop- 
ulation in  a  state  of  respectable  comfort  and  sufficiency. 
But  if,  transgressing  the  former  limit,  we  enter,  with  our 
home  colonists,  on  unprofitable  soils,  and  so  make  way 
to  the  latter  limit — from  that  moment,  in  thus  making 
room  for  a  larger,  we  are  on  the  sure  road  to  a  greatly 
more  wretched  society  than  before. 

8.  That  no  trade  or  manufacture  contributes  more  to 
the  good  of  society  than  the  use  or  enjoyment  which  is 
afforded  by  its  own  commodities;  hence  the  delusiveness 
of  that  importance  which  has  been  ascribed  to  them,  as 


CHALMERS'   TEACHINGS   ANALYZED  17 

if  they  bore  any  creative  part  in  augmenting  the  public 
revenue,  or  as  if,  apart  from  the  use  of  their  commodities, 
they  at  all  contributed  to  the  strength  or  greatness  of 
the  nation;  and  hence,  also,  the  futility  of  the  common 
distinction  between  productive  and  unproductive  labor. 

9.  We  are  not  to  imagine,  though  any  given  branch 
of  trade  or  manufacture  should  be  extinguished,  that  it 
will  sensibly  throw  back  agriculture. 

10.  There  is  a  misplaced  and  exaggerated  alarm  con- 
nected with  the  decay  and  loss  of  trade. 

11.  They  are  chiefly  the  holders  of  the  first  necessaries 
of  life,  or  landed  proprietors,  who  impress,  by  their  taste 
and  demand,  any  direction  which  seemeth  unto  them 
good,  on  the  labors  of  the  disposable  population. 

12.  Grant  but  industry  and  protection,  and  their  cap- 
ital will  be  found  to  have  in  it  as  great  an  increasing 
and  restorative  power  as  population  has. 

13.  That  the  diminution  of  capital,  occasioned  by  ex- 
cessive expenditure,  whether  public  or  private,  is  not  re- 
paired so  much  by  parsimony  as  by  the  action  of  a  di- 
minished capital  on  profits;    and  that  the  extravagance 
of  government  or  of  individuals,  which  raises  prices  by 
the  amount  of  that  extravagance,  produces  only  a  rotation 
of  property,  without  any  further  diminution  of  it  than 
what  arises  from  the  somewhat  higher  rate  of  profit  which 
an  increased  expenditure  brings  along  with  it ;  and  which 
higher  rate  of  profit  must,  to  a  certain  extent,  limit  the 
cultivation  of  land. 

14.  That  trade  is  liable  to  gluts,  both  general  and  par- 
tial;   that  no  skilful  distribution  of  the  capital  among 


18  INTRODUCTION 

particular  trades  can  save  the  losses  which  ensue  from 
a  general  excess  of  trading;  and  that  the  result  is  the 
same  whether  the  undue  extension  has  taken  place  by 
means  of  credit  or  from  an  excess  of  capital. 

15.  That  the  rate  of  profit  is  determined  by  the  collec- 
tive will  of  capitalists,  just  as  the  rate  of  wages  is  by  the 
collective  will  of  laborers — the  former,  by  the  command 
which  they  have,  through  their  greater  or  less  expendi- 
ture, over  the  amount  of  capital;   the  latter  by  the  com- 
mand which  they  have,  through  their  later  or  earlier 
marriages,  over  the  amount  of  population.    That  by  rais- 
ing or  lowering,  therefore,  the  standard  of  enjoyment 
among  capitalists,  profit  is  raised  or  lowered;   that  in  this 
way  both  classes  may  encroach  on  the  rent  of  land  and 
share  its  produce  more  equally  with  the  landlords. 

16.  That  when  the  agricultural  produce  of  a  country 
is  equal  to  the  subsistence  of  its  population,  its  foreign 
trade  is  as  much  directed  by  the  taste  and  upheld  by  the 
ability  of  its  landed  proprietors  as  the  home  trade  is. 

17.  That  it  is  not  desirable  that  the  commerce  of  Brit- 
ain should  greatly  overlap  its  agricultural  basis,  and  that 
the  excrescent  population,  subsisted  on  corn  from  abroad, 
yields  a  very  insignificant  fraction  to  the  public  revenue. 

18.  That,  nevertheless,  there  should  be  a  gradual  relax- 
ation of  the  corn  laws,  and  ultimately  a  free  corn  trade — 
with  the  exception  of  a  small  duty  on  importation,  for 
the  single  purpose  of  a  revenue  to  government,  by  which 
to  meet  the  expenses  to  which  it  is  subjected,  from  the 
addition  made  by  the  excrescent  to  the  whole  population. 

19.  That  the  abolition  of  this  monopoly  in  corn  would 


CHALMERS'    TEACHINGS    ANALYZED  19 

not  be  injurious  to  the  British  landlords,  seeing  that  the 
increase  thereby  given  to  the  value  of  money  might  create 
an  inequality  between  them  and  the  fund-holders,  which 
inequality,  however,  could  be  rectified  by  means  of  an 
adjusted  taxation. 

20.  That  probably  a  free  corn  trade  would  not  burden 
the  country  with  a  large  excrescent  population. 

21.  That  Britain  has  little  or  nothing  to  apprehend 
from  the  loss  of  her  colonies  and  commerce;    but  that 
change  of  employment  to  the  disposable  population,  and 
enjoyment  to  their  maintainers,  would  form  the  whole 
result  of  it.    And  that,  though,  historically,  foreign  trade 
did,  at  the  termination  of  the  middle  ages,  stimulate  agri- 
culture, yet  that  now,  under  all  the  possible  fluctuations 
of  trade,  there  is  perfect  security  for  the  cultivation  of 
land,  on  that  point  at  which  it  ceases  to  yield  any  sur- 
plus produce  to  the  landlord. 

22.  That,  with  the  exception  of  their  first  brief  and 
temporary  effect  on  wages  and  the  profits  of  circulating 
capital,  and  of  their  more  prolonged  effect  on  the  profits 
of  fixed  capital,  all  taxes  fall  upon  land,  the  interest  of 
its  mortgages  being  included. 

23.  That  this  doctrine,  though  now  regarded  as  one 
of  the  exploded  errors  of  the  French  economists,  should 
not  share  in  the  discredit  attached  to  their  school,  if  up- 
held by  other  reasonings,  and  made  to  rest  on  other  prin- 
ciples than  those  of  the  economists.     That  the  grounds 
on  which  our  convictions  in  this  matter  are  established 
were  never  once  recognized  by  these  economists — that  is, 
the  dependence  of  wages  on  an  element  over  which  la- 


20  INTRODUCTION 

borers,  collectively,  have  the  entire  control,  we  mean  pop- 
ulation ;  and  the  dependence  of  profit  on  an  element  over 
which  traders,  collectively,  have  the  entire  control,  we 
mean  the  capital. 

24.  That,  to  estimate  the  whole  effect  of  taxes  upon 
land,  we  should  add  to  the  effect  of  them,  in  aggravating 
the  expenditure  of  landlords,  the  effect  of  them  in  lessen- 
ing the  receipts.    That  every  tax  which  bears  on  the  profit 
or'maintenance  of  the  agricultural  capitalists,  and  which 
bears  on  the  wages  or  maintenance  of  the  agricultural 
and  their  secondary  laborers,  and,  generally,  which  en- 
hances the  expenses  of  farm  management,  creates  a  reduc- 
tion pro  tanto,  from  the  rent.    That,  for  the  commutation 
of  all  taxes  in  a  territorial  and  funded  impost,  there  would 
be  a  full  equivalent  to  the  landlords;  first,  in  the  lessened 
expenses  of  their  living,  and  secondly,  in  the  enlarged  rent 
of  all  the  land  now  under  cultivation.     And  that  they, 
over  and  above,  would  obtain  more  than  an  equivalent 
in  the  new  rent  which  would  accrue  from  the  more  ex- 
tended cultivation  of  their  land,  now  unburdened  of  all 
those  taxes  by  which  the  cultivation  had  formerly  been 
limited. 

25.  That  the  effect  of  tithes,  in  contracting  the  agri- 
culture of  a  country,  is  the  same  with  that  of  taxes  on 
capitalists,  or  laborers,  or  the  instruments  of  husbandry; 
and  that  the  abolition  of  both  would,  in  the  first  instance, 
enlarge  the  comforts  of  the  general  community,  but,  at 
least,  would  prove  exclusively  a  boon  and  an  enlargement 
to  the  landlords. 

26.  That  tithes  and  taxes  ought  not  to  be  abolished,  but 


CHALMEKS'   TEACHINGS   ANALYZED  21 

commuted,  as  there  ought  to  be  a  more  liberal  provision 
for  various  branches  of  the  public  service,  and  more  espe- 
cially for  the  support  of  the  literary  and  ecclesiastical 
establishments,  the  endowment  of  which  is  indispensable 
to  high  scholarship  and  to  the  full  Christian  instruction 
of  the  people. 

27.  That  the  extreme  limit  of  taxation  is  the  landed 
rental  of  the  kingdom;    and  that,  were  taxation  carried 
to  this  limit,  it  would  place  the  great  bulk  of  the  dis- 
posable population  in  the  service  of  the  state. 

28.  That  the  capabilities  of  the  nation  for  defensive 
war  are  greatly  underrated,  they  being  at  least  commen- 
surate to  the  extent  of  the  disposable  population. 

29.  That  the  superior  influence  of  Britain  over  other 
nations  in  distant  parts  is  due  to  her  exports;    and  that 
if,  instead  of  her  lighter  manufactures,  she  had  to  export 
raw  produce,  her  power  in  offensive  war  would  be  les- 
sened, while  she  might  continue  as  strong  in  defensive 
war  as  before ;  and  that,  therefore,  the  balance  of  power 
is  a  topic  of  needless  and  misplaced  anxiety  on  the  part 
of  British  statesmen. 

30.  That  the  national  debt  is  tantamount  to  a  general 
mortgage  on  the  land  of  the  kingdom,  and  that  it  has 
occasioned  no  diminution  of  capital,  the  absorption  of  capi- 
tal by  the  government  loan  of  any  particular  year  being 
replaced  next  year  by  the  operation  of  the  diminished 
capital  upon  profits. 

31.  That  if  the  expenses  of  a  war  are  raised  within  the 
year,  they  do  not  enhance  general  prices;    but  that,  in 
as  far  as  they  are  defrayed  by  loans,  prices  rise,  and  so 


23  INTRODUCTION 

that  the  excess  upon  the  whole  is  equal  to  the  sum 
borrowed. 

32.  That  the  national  debt  is  therefore  a  double  burden 
upon  the  community,  having  already  been  paid  once  in 
the  excess  of  those  higher  prices  which  are  consequent 
upon  each  loan,  and  to  be  paid  a  second  time,  either  by 
a  perpetual  interest  or  by  the  liquidation  of  the  principal. 

33.  That  the  nation  is  able  to  pay  the  expense  of  any 
war  by  taxes  within  the  year,  as  by  taxes  and  loans  to- 
gether, seeing  that,  in  point  of  fact,  it  does  pay  the  loans 
within  the  year,  too,  in  the  higher  prices  which  these 
loans  have  occasioned. 

34.  That  the  law  of  primogeniture  is  essentially  linked 
with  the  political  strength  and  other  great  interests  of  the 
nation. 

35.  That,  on  the  wThole,  no  enlargement  of  our  eco- 
nomical resources  will  suffice  for  the  wants  of  a  popula- 
tion who  are  under  no  moral  or  prudential  restraint  on  the 
increase  of  their  numbers.     That  the  effect  of  each  suc- 
cessive addition  to  the  means  of  our  subsistence  will,  in 
that  case,  be  only  a  larger,  but  not  more  comfortable  or 
better  conditioned,  society.    That,  however  numerous  or 
however  successful  the  expedients  may  be  for  adding  to 
the  amount  of  national  wealth,  they  will  be  nullified,  in 
point  of  effect  on  the  sensible  comfort  of  families,  by  the 
operation  of  but  one  expedient  more,  which  shall  ensure 
a  proportional,  or  beget  a  tendency  toward  a  greater  than 
proportional,  addition  to  the  national  population.     That 
a  law  of  compulsory  relief  for  the  poor  is  precisely  such 
an  expedient,  and  that,  so  long  as  it  is  in  operation,  every 


CHALMERS'    TEACHINGS    ANALYZED  23 

other  device  which  philanthropy  can  suggest,  or  even  an 
enlightened  political  economy  can  sanction,  will  turn  out 
to  be  futile  and  abortive. 

36.  That,  but  for  this  disturbing  force,  which  so  un- 
settles the  prudential  habits  of  the  people  and  so  under- 
mines every  principle,  whether  of  nature  or  of  Christian- 
ity, to  the  spontaneous  operation  of  which  the  care  of  the 
poor  ought  always  to  have  been  confided,  society  might 
undergo  a  very  speedy  amelioration.  Because  that  a  very 
small  excess  in  the  number  of  laborers  effects  a  very  large 
and  disproportionate  reduction  in  the  price  of  labor,  and 
therefore,  by  a  reverse  process,  it  might  only  require  a 
very  insignificant  fraction  of  relief  from  the  numbers  of 
the  people  to  operate  a  very  large  relief  on  their  circum- 
stances and  comforts.  That  emigration  for  the  lessening 
of  the  number,  and  the  various  other  economical  expedi- 
ents for  the  enlargement  of  the  means,  will  be  of  but  slight 
or  temporary  effect  so  long  as  the  law  of  pauperism  shall 
maintain  the  population  in  a  state  of  perpetual  overflow. 
But  that,  if  these  were  related  to  a  scheme  for  the  gradual 
abolition  of  the  pauperism,  they  would  smooth  the  transi- 
tion from  a  system  of  compulsory  to  one  of  natural  and 
gratuitous  relief;  after  which  it  were  in  the  power  of 
common,  and  more  especially  of  Christian,  education,  in- 
definitely to  raise  the  habits  and  tastes,  and,  along  with 
these,  to  raise  the  economical  condition  of  the  people. 


Ill 

CEITICISM   OF   CERTAIN   SOCIAL   TEACH- 
INGS OF  CHALMERS 

MORE  than  half  a  century  has  passed  since  the  great 
man  of  faith,  wisdom,  and  good  works  passed  away  from 
earth.  During  the  intervening  time  the  civilized  world 
has  been  urged  forward  upon  a  path  which  the  wisest 
philosopher  could  not  foresee  and  foretell.  A  science  is 
the  explanation  of  a  system  of  facts,  and  the  facts  have 
changed.  By  a  division  of  mental  labor  and  a  process 
of  critical  discussion,  the  economists  have  sifted  good 
grain  from  the  chaff  of  error.  We  may  believe  that  if 
Dr.  Chalmers  could  have  lived  to  our  day  and  followed 
the  course  of  experience  and  academic  discussion,  he 
would  issue  a  new  edition  of  his  "  Christian  and  Civic 
Economy  of  Large  Towns,"  and  he  would  have  made  it 
shorter,  out  of  respect  for  the  more  rapid  movement  of 
our  age.  He  might  justly  still  claim  that  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  his  work  are  valid.  Some  of  his 
theoretical  positions  and  practical  recommendations  he 
would  modify. 

In  the  body  of  the  text  of  this  edition  of  his  work 
his  very  words  remain  undisturbed.  But  the  reader 
should  not  permit  himself  to  be  carried  along  with  the 
torrent  of  eager  and  impetuous  argument  without  hints 

34 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  25 

of  needed  caution  and  amendment.  Even  that  august 
instrument,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  pro- 
vided for  changes  in  its  own  articles.  The  thinkers  and 
guides  of  one  generation  cannot  lay  down  minute  rules 
for  later  generations.  The  study  of  history,  philosophy, 
and  science  does  not  take  the  place  of  tact,  technical 
training,  and  ability  to  meet  new  conditions.  The  criti- 
cism of  a  powerful  book  is  itself  a  valuable  method  of 
preparing  the  mind  for  theoretical  comprehension  and 
practical  understanding  of  the  elements  of  a  contempo- 
rary social  situation. 

The  criticism  which  is  here  offered  does  not  claim  to 
cover  all  the  defects  of  the  book  nor  to  deal  with  any 
particular  point  exhaustively.  The  chief  purpose  is  to 
raise  cautionary  signals  and  start  the  reader  on  indepen- 
dent lines  of  reflection  and  reconsideration. 


DEFECTS    IN    ECONOMIC    THEORY    AND    PRACTICAL 
RECOMMENDATIONS 

In  Chapter  XVII.  our  author  says:  "  Wages  form  the 
price  of  labor;  and  this  price,  like  that  of  every  other 
commodity,  is  determined  by  the  proportion  which  ob- 
tains between  the  supply  of  it  in  the  market  and  the 
effective  demand  for  it.  Should  the  supply  be  dimin- 
ished, or  the  demand  increase,  the  price  rises.  Should  the 
supply  be  increased,  or  the  demand  slacken,  the  price 
falls."  From  this  fundamental  position  it  is  argued: 
"  That  no  economic  enlargements  in  the  wealth  and  re- 
sources of  a  country  can  ensure  aught  like  a  permanent 


26  INTRODUCTION 

comfort  or  sufficiency  to  the  families  of  a  land.  Followed 
up  as  these  enlargements  are  by  a  commensurate,  or  gen- 
erally by  an  over-passing  increase  of  population.  .  .  . 
In  these  circumstances  the  highway  to  our  secure  and 
stable  prosperity  is  not  so  much  to  enlarge  the  limit  of 
our  external  means  as  to  restrain  the  numbers  of  the 
population." 

We  are  here  at  once  involved  in  an  economic  contro- 
versy, not  yet  closed,  in  respect  to  the  "  wages  fund  "  and 
the  theory  of  population  as  taught  by  Malthus.  It  would 
require  a  large  volume  to  discuss  the  various  aspects  of 
these  problems.* 

The  Malthusian  doctrine  in  Chalmers'  teaching. — The 
core  of  this  teaching  is  declared  to  be  sound  by  the  most 
important  economists.  It  ever  remains  true  that  it  is 
possible  for  population  to  multiply  beyond  its  power  to 
provide  the  means  of  existence,  efficiency,  and  comfort. 
The  theory  has  been  pronounced  false  and  immoral.  It 
has  been  ridiculed  and  buried  under  contemptuous  epi- 
thets. But  both  in  economic  science  and  in  practice,  even 
in  the  practice  of  those  who  refuse  to  accept  the  economic 
theory,  it  has  held  the  ground  in  all  civilized  countries. 

Those  who  point  to  the  fact  that  wealth  has  increased 
faster  than  population,  and  use  this  well-established  fact 
as  a  triumphant  disproof  of  Malthus's  doctrine  of  popu- 
lation, seem  to  overlook  two  aspects  of  the  history.  The 

*  Some  recent  discussions  of  these  topics  may  be  found  in  :  Marshall, 
Principles  of  Economics,  I.,  p.  572,  etc.;  F.  A.  Walker,  The  Wages 
Question;  Political  Economy  (Advanced  Course),  p.  364,  3d  ed. ;  North 
American  Review,  Jan.,  1875;  F.  W.  Taussig,  Wages  and  Capital;  A. 
T.  Hadley,  Economics,  Chap.  X. ;  Webb,  Problems  of  Modern  Indus- 
try, p.  161. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES   EXAMINED  27 

educated  classes,  including  the  higher  ranks  of  mechan- 
ics and  artisans,  have  acted  on  the  advice  of  Malthus  and 
Chalmers,  and  they  multiply  less  rapidly  than  persons 
of  the  same  classes  early  in  the  century,  while  the  pro- 
ductive power  of  machinery  and  of  industrial  and  com- 
mercial organization  have  vastly  increased  the  national 
income.  The  best  proof  that  Chalmers  was  right  is  that 
those  who  have  followed  his  advice  have  reaped  the  re- 
ward in  a  larger  average  income.  The  other  aspect  of 
the  history  is  tragic  and  pathetic :  the  population  of  the 
feeble,  the  defective,  and  the  improvident  has  kept  level 
with  the  means  of  subsistence  only  by  means  of  theft, 
beggary,  vice,  and  an  enormous  mortality,  especially  of 
infants.  Those  who  believed  Malthus  and  Chalmers  have 
increased  comfort,  health,  wealth,  intellectual  progress, 
and  higher  morality.  Those  who  have  not  yet  come  un- 
der the  sway  of  these  ideas  suffer  the  consequences  and 
pass  on  the  evil  to  their  offspring. 

But  the  doctrine  needs  modification;  it  is  not  alto- 
gether right,  and  it  is  not  the  only  matter  of  importance. 
Chalmers  laid  emphasis  on  a  single  remedy  of  restricting 
population,  and  did  not  adequately  consider  its  shortcom- 
ing. He  did  not,  on  one  side,  foresee  the  tremendous 
additions  to  the  productive  forces  of  the  nation;  on  the 
other  side  he  did  not  give  sufficient  weight  to  the  pressure 
of  population  from  the  lower  ranks  and  from  distant 
countries. 

To  all  that  he  says  an  intelligent  wage-worker  might 
reply  with  anger  and  scorn:  "  Of  what  value  will  it  be 
to  ordinary  laborers  to  marry  late  if  cheap  labor  may 


28  INTRODUCTION 

constantly  come  up  from  the  proletariat  or  be  imported 
from  countries  where  poverty  is  prolific?  Those  who 
have  a  partial  monopoly  of  positions  because  of  unusual 
skill  may  be  protected  from  this  competition  by  belong- 
ing to  what  Professor  Cairnes  called  the  '  non-competing 
groups.'  But  in  many  callings  machinery  reduces  all 
to  a  low  level  and  breaks  down  these  barriers  and  dykes 
of  skill.  Dr.  Chalmers  himself  actually  advises  the  im- 
portation of  cheap  laborers  from  Ireland  in  order  to  over- 
whelm strikers  and  '  teach  them  a  lesson '  of  the  use- 
lessness  of  trades-unions  under  the  conditions  of  '  free 
competition  '  and  '  natural  economic  laws.'  Chalmers 
denounced  any  '  artificial '  legislative  or  associated  ef- 
fort on  behalf  of  the  wage-workers;  but  the  importation 
of  half-starved  Irishmen  or  Belgians  or  negroes,  in  time 
of  strike,  would  seem  to  his  mind  perfectly  natural  and 
in  accordance  with  the  divine  harmonies  of  political 
economy!  " 

Again,  Chalmers  did  not  and  could  not  be  expected 
to  foresee  the  numerous  artificial  obstructions  to  compe- 
tition devised  by  capitalists — patent  and  copyright  privi- 
leges, the  power  of  vast  corporations,  combinations,  pools, 
trusts,  which  have  been  enabled  to  derive  exceptional 
profits  by  means  of  charter  privileges  from  public  busi- 
ness, until  the  modern  world  is  perplexed  to  know  how 
to  protect  itself  from  these  creatures  of  law.*  The  poor- 
est, most  shiftless  and  feeble  of  the  population  have  many 
children  and  crowd  the  more  careful,  skilful,  and  provi- 
dent workmen  with  their  competition.  In  such  circum- 
*  See  Webb,  Industrial  Democracy,  II. ,  p.  644. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES   EXAMINED  29 

stances  it  is  false  and  cruel  to  charge  the  wage-workers 
with  the  entire  responsibility  for  inadequate  wages,  as 
Chalmers  does  when  he  says  that  their  immoral  and  ex- 
cessive child-breeding  is  the  sole  cause  of  low  wages. 
Neither  individual  continence,  nor  a  custom  of  late  mar- 
riages in  the  higher  classes  of  industrials,  nor  trade-union 
action,  can  prevent  the  invasion  of  numbers,  so  long  as 
the  poorest  and  weakest  are  so  prolific. 

Nor  can  society  suffer  these  weaker  members  to  perish 
without  help.  Modern  nations  base  their  customs  and 
their  poor  laws  on  the  assumption  that  every  human 
being  has  a  right  to  the  means  of  existence,  once  he  is 
born.  No  Christian  state  permits  any  citizen  to  starve. 
If  private  charity  fails,  public  relief  is  provided. 

If  society  thus  accepts  the  responsibility  for  support- 
ing those  who  fail  to  support  themselves  by  that  act,  it 
gains  the  right  to  say  how  they  shall  be  supported  and 
how  many  children  they  shall  have  after  the  dependence 
begins.  So  long  as  a  man  takes  care  of  himself  he  is 
legally  free  to  live  where  he  chooses  and  marry  whom 
he  will.  But  the  moment  he  asks  society  to  care  for  him 
he  surrenders  this  liberty.  The  community,  under  all 
poor  laws,  has  long  asserted  the  right  to  say  whether  the 
paupers  shall  live  in  families  and  be  permitted  to  mul- 
tiply their  kind,  or  in  closed  institutions.  For  those  who 
are  manifestly  defective,  as  the  feeble-minded,  some 
states  have  already  provided  rural,  non-competing,  self- 
supporting  celibate  colonies.  It  seems  probable  that  dur- 
ing the  next  half  century  this  principle  will  be  greatly 
extended.  Such  an  extension  of  social  control  could  not 


80  INTRODUCTION 

have  been  understood  before  the  days  of  Charles  Darwin 
and  the  other  biologists. 

As  to  the  actual  historical  facts  of  population,  our  dis- 
tinguished author,  like  many  other  writers  of  his  time, 
was  altogether  too  absolute.  In  his  "  Political  Economy  " 
he  wrote :  "  The  great  historical  fact  remains  unshaken 
that,  let  the  means  of  subsistence  be  increased  however 
largely  and  suddenly,  this  is  sure  to  be  followed  by  a 
corresponding  increase  of  population.  .  .  .  Every 
increase  of  food  is  followed  up  by  an  increase  of  popu- 
lation. .  .  .  Through  the  medium  of  the  stimulation 
given  to  population,  it  does  what  no  other  articles  of 
merchandise  can  do;  it  multiplies  its  own  consumers. 
A  plenty  of  the  first  necessaries  is  the  only  species  of 
plenty  which  surely  and  largely  tells  on  the  population." 

Now  the  historical  fact  already  alluded  to  is  that  wealth 
has  greatly  outgrown  the  general  population.* 

It  is  also  a  mistake  of  serious  practical  importance  to  af- 
firm that  specific  information  in  regard  to  the  law  of  popu- 
lation is  of  no  value.  Chalmers  says :  "  We  can  imagine 
nothing  more  preposterous  than  the  diffusion,  for  this 
purpose,  of  tracts  on  population,  among  the  families  of 
the  land."  Why,  then,  does  the  author  himself  continue, 
year  after  year,  to  publish,  as  widely  as  possible,  just  such 
tracts?  Does  he  not  distribute,  wholesale  and  broadcast, 
the  teaching  of  Malthus  as  almost  the  sole  means  of 
social  salvation,  economically  and  morally,  of  the  poor? 
Did  he  imagine  that  none  but  physicians  and  magistrates 
would  read  his  works? 

*  Nitti,  La  Population. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  31 

It  was  just  because  this  doctrine  was  published  and 
popularized,  under  various  forms  of  practical  advice,  that 
the  rate  of  increase  of  population  fell  off  in  all  modern 
countries.* 

Trades-Unions. — In  the  earlier  decades  of  this  century 
economists  of  distinction  taught  that  combinations  of 
wage-earners  to  raise  wages  were  useless.  Chalmers  was 
in  advance  of  many  leaders  of  society  in  his  time,  because 
he  strongly  opposed  the  suppression  of  such  associations 
by  arbitrary  legal  force,  and  he  held  that  they  would 
gradually  disappear  before  the  march  of  economic  ex- 
perience and  knowledge.  His  argument  was  a  part  of 
his  general  theory  of  the  conditions  which  determine  the 
rate  of  wages.  The  great  economists  of  our  age,  having 
rejected  or  essentially  modified  the  "  wage  fund  "  theory, 
no  longer  assume  a  hostile  attitude  to  the  unions,  and 
very  generally  approve  them.  Extravagant  expectations 
are  sobered  by  economic  science,  but  reasonable  measures 
are  encouraged. 

The  very  general  and  bitter  antagonism  to  trades- 
unions  on  the  part  of  capitalist  managers  is  in  large  part 
due  to  their  discovery  of  the  extreme  efficiency  of  union 
methods  of  making  bargains.  The  annals  of  the  labor 

*  This  table  will  show  the  tendency  in  the  United  States  : 

1850  Number  of  persons  per  family.  5.55 

1860         "  "  "         .  5.28 

1870         "  "  "         .  5.09 

1880         "  "  "         .  5.04 

1890         "  "  "         .  4.93 

Here  is  shown  a  decrease  of  11.17  per  cent.  The  average  duration  of 
life  seems  to  have  increased  about  10  per  cent.  The  standard  of  life 
has  risen.  See  C.  D.  Wright,  Practical  Sociology,  p.  69. 


32  INTRODUCTION 

movement  furnish  only  too  many  illustrations  of  the 
questionable  and  often  cruel  measures  employed  to  de- 
stroy these  associations,  so  dear  to  wage-workers.  Many 
economists  and  statesmen  are  convinced  that  workingmen 
will  need  the  protection  of  law  to  prevent  their  employers 
from  discharging  those  who  belong  to  unions. 

Chalmers  predicted,  on  the  basis  of  his  theory,  that 
hired  laborers  would,  if  left  entirely  free,  soon  weary 
of  spending  energy  and  money  on  a  useless  organization. 
But  three-quarters  of  a  century  have  passed  and  the  hired 
laborers  of  all  modern  countries  cling  to  their  unions 
and  make  fraternal  sacrifices  for  them  as  their  best  reli- 
ance in  bargaining  for  the  best  possible  terms.  If  this 
universal  belief  of  educated  workmen,  after  this  long 
and  costly  trial,  is  a  pure  delusion,  it  would  seem  diffi- 
cult for  great  bodies  of  men  to  learn  anything  from 
experience. 

The  opposition  of  Chalmers  to  unions  was  natural  for 
him.  He  lived  soon  after  the  modern  states  had  suc- 
ceeded in  breaking  down  the  narrow  monopolies  and  op- 
pressions of  the  antiquated  mediaeval  guilds  and  feudal 
privileges.  The  world  was  entering  upon  the  magnifi- 
cent enterprises  of  modern  industry  under  a  regime  of 
freedom.  Manufactures  and  commerce  had  begun  to 
flourish  as  these  ancient  chains  fell  to  the  earth.  The 
ruling  members  of  society  have  generally  looked  upon 
combinations  of  wage-workers  with  class  dislike,  born 
of  class  interest.  This  instinct  survives  and  is  inevitable. 

When  Chalmers  wrote,  the  capitalists  were  seeking  to 
destroy  the  unions  by  legal  enactment  and  police  power. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  33 

For  this  there  was  some  pretext.  The  unions,  yet  with- 
out the  discipline  of  experience,  were  sometimes  guilty 
of  shameful  and  criminal  acts  which  made  a  defence  of 
their  cause  and  principle  exceedingly  difficult.  Some 
of  the  worst  of  these  outbreaks  occurred  while  the  book 
was  going  through  the  press  in  the  serial  form.  The 
strong  manufacturers  and  their  friends  were  bent  on 
reactionary  legislation,  eager  to  make  simple  combina- 
tion itself,  apart  from  evidence  of  violence,  a  penal 
offence. 

Chalmers  urged,  on  economic  ground,  that  such  laws 
were  entirely  unnecessary.  The  criminal  laws  should  be 
enforced,  and  they  were  adequate  for  the  purpose.  Act- 
ual attacks  on  persons,  on  liberty  of  labor,  on  property, 
should  be  severely  punished.  Trades-unions  would  die 
if  left  alone.  They  could  not  stand  before  "  economic 
laws,"  those  deities  of  the  capitalists  and  economists.  As 
a  matter  of  policy  it  would  be  better  for  the  workmen  to 
discover  the  futility  of  unions  by  experience,  and  then 
they  would  not  feel  that  their  plan  of  protection  had 
been  suppressed  by  arbitrary  and  oppressive  action. 

Our  prophet  was  wise,  but  he  was  not  omniscient.  He 
distinctly  foretold  the  speedy  dissolution  of  the  unions, 
and  yet  they  have  actually  grown  in  all  civilized  lands 
and  become  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  necessary  ele- 
ments in  the  regulation  of  industrial  relations.  Their 
existence  is  a  mark  of  social  progress.  They  hold  a  le- 
gally recognized  position,  and  ethical  sanctions  have  been 
given  by  society  to  all  their  essential  aims  and  methods. 

Those  earlier  trades-unions,  even  in  their  acts  of  vio- 


34  INTRODUCTION 

lence,  have  found  defenders  among  recent  conservative 
economists.  In  reference  to  those  very  outbreaks  of 
which  Chalmers  speaks,  President  F.  A.  Walker  *  says : 
"  For  myself,  I  entertain  no  doubt  that  the  early  strikes 
in  England,  which  followed  the  repeal,  in  1824,  of  the 
Combination  acts,  were  essential  to  the  breaking  up  of 
the  power  of  custom  and  fear  over  the  minds  of  the  work- 
ing classes  of  the  kingdom.  For  centuries  it  had  been 
a  crime,  by  statute,  for  workmen  to  combine  to  raise 
wages  or  shorten  the  hours  of  labor,  while  masters  were 
left  perfectly  free  to  combine  to  lower  wages  or  lengthen 
the  hours  of  labor.  The  beginning  of  the  century  found 
the  laboring  classes  of  England  almost  destitute  of  po- 
litical franchises,  unaccustomed  to  discussion  and  the  free 
communication  of  thought,  tax-ridden,  poverty-stricken, 
illiterate.  What  else  than  the  series  of  fierce  revolts,  the 
rebellions  of  down-trodden  labor,  which  followed  Hus- 
kisson's  act  of  1824,  could,  in  any  equal  period  of  time, 
or,  indeed,  at  smaller  cost,  have  taught  the  employers 
of  England  to  respect  their  laborers,  and  have  taught  the 
laborers  of  England  to  respect  themselves;  could  have 
made  the  latter  equally  confident  and  self-reliant  in  press- 
ing home  a  just  demand,  or  made  the  former  equally 
solicitous  to  refuse  no  demand  that  could  reasonably  be 
conceded?  Nothing  quickens  the  sense  of  justice  and 
equity  like  the  consciousness  that  unjust  and  inequitable 
demands  or  acts  are  likely  to  be  promptly  resented  and 
strenuously  resisted.  '  Nothing  is  so  potent  to  clarify  the 
judgment  and  sober  the  temper,  in  questions  of  right  or 
*  Political  Economy  (Advanced),  p.  377. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  35 

wrong,  as  to  know  that  a  mistake  will  lead  to  a  hard  and 
a  long  fight." 

The  philanthropist  believed  in  friendly  societies  and 
savings  banks  as  means  of  individual  thrift.  He  admits 
the  principle  of  individual  bargaining  of  laborer  with 
employer,  and,  in  admitting  this,  he  gives  large  place 
to  the  objects  of  trades-unions.  "  Could  they  merely  af- 
ford to  slacken  their  work  in  a  season  of  depressed  wages, 
or  to  cease  from  working  altogether,  the  overstocked  mar- 
kets would  be  far  more  speedily  cleared  away,  and  the 
remuneration  for  labor  would  again  come  back  to  its 
wonted  or  natural  level." 

The  wage-workers  of  the  higher  ranks  have  made  a 
discovery  which  is  gradually  being  communicated  to 
lower  ranks  of  labor,  and  they  learned  their  lesson  by 
instinct  and  bitter  trial,  without  help  of  philanthropists 
or  economists,  and  in  face  of  almost  universal  disapproval 
and  contempt  among  the  "  upper  classes."  This  discov- 
ery was  that  collective  bargaining  has  all  the  advantages 
of  individual  bargaining,  and  with  powerful  elements  in 
addition.  If  fifty  thousand  men  have  a  single  fund,  un- 
der one  direction,  it  is  far  more  effective  as  an  argument 
with  employers  than  ten  times  the  same  sum  scattered 
about  in  fifty  thousand  insignificant  hoards. 

The  economists  have  gradually  come  around  to  admit 
into  their  theory  what  the  humble  and  often  illiterate 
wage-workers  of  England  found  out  under  the  stern 
tuition  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  that  "  in  union  there 
is  strength."  No  economist  would  now  approve  this  lan- 
guage of  our  author :  "  For  the  purpose  of  working  a 


36  INTRODUCTION 

good  effect  it  is  not  necessary  that  there  should  be  any 
combined  or  co-operate  movement.  .  .  .  The  thing 
works  far  best  when  it  works  naturally."  All  will  agree, 
and  capitalists  most  of  all,  that  collective  bargaining  is 
like  the  bundle  of  rods  firmly  bound  together  and  diffi- 
cult to  break,  while  individual  bargaining  is  the  single 
rod  which  a  child's  hand  can  snap. 

A  few  quotations  and  references  will  illustrate  the  posi- 
tion of  present-day  economics  in  relation  to  trades-unions. 
The  honored  president  of  Yale  University  says :  "  At 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century  the  law  and  the 
public  sentiment  among  the  property  owning  classes  were 
both  unfavorable  to  the  organization  of  labor.  This  was 
conspicuously  the  case  in  England.  To  say  that  laborers 
were  not  allowed  to  combine  in  defence  of  their  rights 
is  to  put  the  matter  altogether  too  mildly.  The  slightest 
attempt  at  concurrent  action  to  increase  the  price  of  their 
services  was  visited  by  the  severest  penalties.  As  late  as 
1834,  six  Dorchester  laborers  were  sent  as  convicts  to 
Botany  Bay  for  the  mere  act  of  forming  a  labor  organiza- 
tion which  had  not  even  asked  for  an  advance  of  wages. 
But,  with  the  growth  of  democratic  power,  a  more  liberal 
policy  began  to  prevail.  Not  the  least  among  the  series 
of  English  factory  acts  were  those  which  gave  increasing 
recognition  of  the  right  of  laborers  to  combine. 

"  The  change  in  public  sentiment  toward  trades-unions 
has  not  quite  kept  pace  with  changes  in  the  law.  In 
the  minds  of  a  large  section  of  the  public,  labor  unions 
are  chiefly  associated  with  strikes.  It  is  believed  by  many 
who  ought  to  know  better  that  such  organizations  exist 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  37 

for  the  purpose  of  striking,  and  that  if  the  organizations 
were  suppressed,  industrial  peace  would  be  secured." 

The  distinguished  professor  of  economics  at  Harvard 
has  written,  in  a  classic  work:  "  Much  has  been  said 
of  late  years  in  regard  to  ...  the  importance  of  his 
[the  laborer's]  strength  in  bargaining.  Recurrently — 
as  a  rule,  at  short  intervals — the  contract  on  which  his 
income  depends  must  be  renewed.  If  he  stands  alone, 
if  he  has  no  savings  from  past  income  which  would  en- 
able him  to  wait  and  see  what  the  market  offers,  if  he 
is  ignorant  and  generally  helpless,  he  bargains  at  great 
disadvantage.  If  he  is  banded  with  his  fellows,  if  he 
possesses  the  wherewithal  to  make  a  trial  of  strength,  and 
if  he  has  shrewd  and  well-informed  leaders,  he  bargains 
to  the  best  advantage.  The  strength  which  the  trades- 
union  gives  the  hired  laborer  in  dealing  with  his  em- 
ployers was  not  doubted  even  in  the  days  of  greatest 
faith  in  the  natural  laws  which  were  supposed  to  regulate 
economic  phenomena  in  general,  and  wages  in  particular. 
~No  one  would  question  it  in  these  less  conservative 
times."  f  We  have  seen  that  Chalmers  and  others  did 
question  at  least  the  final  issue  of  the  attempt  to  get  a 
better  bargain  by  artificial  organization. 

The  eminent  professor  of  economics  at  Cambridge  Uni- 
versity, England,  gives  a  carefully  guarded  but  outspoken 
approval  of  the  legitimate  function  of  trades-unions:^: 
"  The  power  of  unions  to  raise  general  wages  by  direct 

*  A.  T.  Hadley,  Economics,  p.  352. 

|F.  W.  Taussig,  Wages  and  Capital  (1895),  p.  79. 

j  Alfred  Marshall,  Economics  of  Industry  (1892),  p.  408. 


38  INTRODUCTION 

means  is  never  great;  it  is  never  sufficient  to  contend 
successfully  with  the  great  economic  forces  of  the  age, 
when  their  drift  is  against  a  rise  of  wages.  But  yet  it 
is  sufficient  materially  to  benefit  the  worker,  when  it  is 
so  directed  as  to  co-operate  with  and  to  strengthen  those 
general  agencies  which  are  tending  to  improve  his  posi- 
tion morally  and  economically." 

To  the  same  effect  writes  one  of  the  foremost  econo- 
mists of  the  greatest  German  university,  Professor  A. 
Wagner.* 

The  late  President  F.  A.  Walker  f  may  again  be 
quoted :  "  With  a  body  of  employers,  few,  rich,  and 
powerful,  having  a  friendly  understanding  among  them- 
selves and  acting  aggressively  for  the  reduction  of  wages 
or  the  extension  of  the  hours  of  work,  and,  on  the  other 
side,  a  body  of  laborers,  numerous,  ignorant,  poor,  mut- 
ually distrustful,  while  each  feels  under  a  terrible  neces- 
sity to  secure  employment,  who  shall  say  that  such  a  body 
of  laborers  might  not  be  better  able  to  resist  the  destruc- 
tive pressure  from  the  employing  body  if  organized  and 
disciplined,  with  a  common  purse  and  with  mutual  obli- 
gations enforced  by  the  public  opinion  of  their  class? " 

The  economic  theory  which  controlled  the  earliest 
thinkers  and  capitalists,  rejected  the  so-called  "  paternal  " 
legislation  which  has  grown  with  the  political  power  of 
the  wage-workers,  and  is  certain  to  be  extended  by  the 
same  force.  We  have  advanced  so  far  as  to  demand,  in 
the  name  of  humanity  and  general  welfare,  a  certain 

*See  Unternehmergewinn  und  Arbeitslohn  (1897),  S.  7. 
t  Political  Economy  (Advanced,  1898),  p.  376. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  3!) 

minimum  standard  of  sanitary  regulation.  Hours  have 
been  shortened  where  the  longer  periods  of  toil  were 
found  injurious  to  the  health  and  industrial  efficiency 
of  children  and  women,  and  even  of  men.  The  minimum 
space  for  air  and  the  minimum  provision  for  light  have 
been  fixed  by  statute.  In  prisons  the  labor  and  diet  of 
criminals  are  determined,  independent  of  wardens  and 
contractors,  by  the  physician.  The  state  has  a  right  to 
deprive  of  liberty,  but,  for  less  than  capital  crimes,  does 
not  wish  to  deprive  of  health  and  life.  One  step  more 
in  the  same  direction  and  for  the  same  reasons,  and  we 
shall  have  a  legal  regulation  of  the  minimum  wage  at 
which  employers  will  be  permitted  to  hire  labor,  that 
minimum  being  determined  by  medical  authority  as 
necessary  for  health  and  industrial  efficiency. 

Such  a  step  would  at  once  reveal  sharply  the  line,  now 
confused,  which  divides  pauper  labor  from  real  self-sup- 
porting labor,  and  would  make  evident  that  many  manu- 
facturers and  tradesmen  are  now  partly  supporting  their 
business  and  profits  out  of  the  poor  fund.  Such  a  sug- 
gestion seems  to  many  persons  chimerical  now;  much 
more  was  it  impossible  for  Chalmers  to  conceive. 

It  seems  probable  that  Chalmers  never  clearly  realized 
the  existence  of  a  considerable  class  who  could  not  under 
any  circumstances  produce  the  entire  cost  of  their  own 
support.  Rapid  machinery  has  made  manifest  to  all  that 
many  of  the  "  unemployed  "  are  also  "  unemployable." 
All  schemes  for  providing  work  for  the  latter  class  in 
ordinary  industry  must  be  shattered  on  the  rock  of  in- 
capacity. 


40  INTRODUCTION 

Certain  movements  for  the  amelioration  of  the  condi- 
tions of  laborers  were  not  within  the  vision  of  the  age 
of  Chalmers.  Friendly  societies  had  long  existed,  but  had 
not  begun  to  assume  the  immense  importance  of  recent 
years.*  The  capacity  of  workingmen  to  secure  advan- 
tages through  their  own  organization  of  industry  through 
salaried  officers  was  not  suspected.  The  Rochdale  Pio- 
neers and  the  Christian  Socialists  had  not  yet  taught,  by 
prophecy  and  practical  demonstration,  that  a  system  of 
co-operation  can  be  built  up  by  wage-earners  which  can 
command  the  attention  and  respect  of  the  business 
world. 

Factory  legislation  is  hardly  mentioned  by  Chalmers. 
He  was  not  looking  in  that  direction.  His  conscience 
had  not  been  aroused  to  feel  the  evils  of  the  factory 
system  in  crowded  cities.  His  political  theory  of  the 
functions  of  government  might  have  stood  in  his  way 
to  invent  legal  means  of  promoting  the  national  welfare. 
The  life-work  of  another  great  philanthropist,  of  differ- 
ent theory  and  training,  was  needed  to  supplement  the 
service  of  the  Scotch  reformer,  f 

Municipal  ministrations  have  helped  to  improve  the 
physical,  intellectual,  and  aesthetic  life  of  urban  work- 
men beyond  all  the  possibilities  of  individual  enterprise 
or  voluntary  associations.  And  these  efforts  have  been 
put  forth  upon  a  theory  of  the  proper  function  of  local 

*  See  Baernreither,  English  Associations  of  Workingmen;  H.  D. 
Lloyd,  Labor  Co-partnership ;  Beatrice  Potter  (Mrs.  Webb),  The  Co- 
operative Movement  in  Great  Britain ;  B.  Jones,  Co-operative  Produc- 
tion ;  G.  J.  Holyoake,  The  History  of  Co-operation  in  England. 

t  See  Hodder's  Life  of  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  41 

government  which  was  formerly  regarded  with  detesta- 
tion.* 

The  benevolence  of  our  author  in  his  attitude  to  wage- 
workers  is  unquestionably  sincere.  He  really  desired 
to  see  them  happy  and  properly  educated  to  fit  them  for 
their  station  in  life.  But  he  did  not  sympathize  with, 
he  could  not  understand,  the  aspirations  of  democracy. 
He  did  not  appreciate  the  meaning  of  the  social  current 
which  bears  that  name.  He  had  much  of  the  spirit  of 
the  magnanimous  patron  and  aristocrat.  He  speaks  of 
"  the  lower  orders  "  in  a  way  which  would  provoke  re- 
volt in  a  modern  audience.  His  use  of  the  epithet  "  ple- 
beian "  sounds  very  offensive  to  modern  ears. 

One  of  the  propositions  of  the  "  Political  Economy  " 
is  "  that  the  law  of  primogeniture  is  essentially  linked 
with  the  political  strength  and  other  great  public  inter- 
ests of  the  nation."  Modern  democracy,  where  it  has 
come  to  power,  totally  rejects  this  feudalistic  doctrine 
and  all  that  it  implies.  Each  child  is  placed  on  a  basis 
of  equal  legal  advantage  in  the  inheritance  of  family 
property.  The  individual  is  not  to  be  sacrificed  to  fam- 
ily, or  especially  to  an  oldest  son. 

We  discern  ecclesiastical  bias  and  clerical  limitations. 
"We  should  acknowledge  the  tolerant  spirit  of  Chalmers 
in  relation  to  dissenters.  He  appreciated  and  generously 
praised  their  services.  He  defended  them  from  aspersion 
and  legal  persecution.  He  associated  with  them  on 
friendly  terms,  and  worshipped  with  them  as  a  brother. 
But  he  never  could  quite  rise  above  the  tone  and  feeling 
*  See  A.  Shaw,  Municipal  Government  in  Great  Britain. 


42  INTRODUCTION 

of  one  who  is  brought  up  in  a  State  establishment.  Tol- 
eration is  not  the  treatment  which  the  members  of  a 
self-supporting  religious  body  ask  for  themselves.  Entire 
equality  of  rights  before  the  law,  and  abolition  of  all 
legal  privileges  for  any,  are  the  demands  of  so-called 
dissenters  in  modern  democracy..  The  word  "  tolera- 
tion "  is  intended  to  mean  something  very  kind,  but  to 
a  modern  dissenter  it  is  an  insult.  The  writings  of  Chal- 
mers mark  the  transition  from  the  old  attitude  of  hostil- 
ity and  contempt  to  the  modern  position  of  equality  in 
the  State.  He  probably  never  suspected  that  the  very 
words  which  he  meant  to  be  kind  sounded  with  a  tone 
of  arrogance  and  pity  which  gave  pain  to  many  who 
admired  him. 

The  clergyman's  bias  is  also  only  too  apparent.  He 
never  quite  succeeded  in  looking  at  government  and  busi- 
ness as  a  man  of  the  world  sees  things.  Held  comments 
on  this  fact  and  marks  it  as  a  limitation. 

The  apparent  failure  of  Chalmers'  scheme  of  poor  re- 
lief must  be  considered.  With  all  the  energy  of  his  active 
nature,  urged  by  the  most  benevolent  motives  and  clear- 
est convictions  as  to  purpose  and  way,  the  author  pleaded 
and  toiled,  to  the  end  of  his  days,  for  the  abolition  of 
public  and  official  out-door  relief — that  is,  the  aid  of  poor 
families  in  their  homes  by  funds  raised  by  taxation.  He 
organized  parishes  of  the  poor  to  show  that  such  relief 
is  not  necessary.  He  gave  illustrations  of  the  evils  of 
the  English  system  of  "  pauperism,"  which  was  creeping 
into  Scotland. 

And  most  men  would  say  that  he  failed.     Scotland 


CHALMERS'   DOCTRINES   EXAMINED  43 

rejected  his  message  *  on  this  point  and  introduced  the 
English  system,  and  adheres  to  it  up  to  this  day,  with 
no  apparent  prospect  of  any  serious  change  of  policy. 
Germany  has  since  then  extended  and  perfected  a  sys- 
tem based  on  the  very  principle  which  Chalmers  fought 
— that  the  State  is  under  obligation  to  aid  and  support 
the  helpless  poor.  Even  Catholic  countries,  as  France 
and  Italy,  have  moved  far  in  the  direction  of  admitting 
a  legal  "  right  to  live,"  by  extending  the  legal  measures 
for  relief  of  dependent  families.  The  great  labor  move- 

*  The  main  facts  are  summed  up  in  a  note  to  Sir  George  Nicholls' 
History  of  the  English  Poor  Law,  I. ,  p.  8,  note.  "  In  Scotland,  down  to 
1579,  there  was  little  difference  in  principle  from  the  practice  pursued 
in  this  country  [England],  Scotch  legislation  following  English  ex- 
ample at  intervals  sometimes  of  forty  or  fifty  years,  and  the  important 
Act  of  James  VI.,  cap.  74  (on  which  the  Scotch  Poor  Laws  mainly 
rested  for  a  long  time),  closely  resembling  the  English  Act  of  14  Eliza- 
beth, cap.  5.  Thenceforward,  however,  the  two  systems  tended  to 
diverge,  particularly  in  respect  of  the  provision  of  funds.  The  Scotch 
Law  permitted,  indeed,  the  raising  of  money  by  compulsory  assess- 
ment, but  only  if  voluntary  contributions  should  be  insufficient ;  and, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  power  of  assessment  was  rarely  employed. 
Funds  were  collected  and  administered  principally  by  quasi-ecclesias- 
tical machinery,  the  amount  of  relief  being  proportioned  to  the  amount 
of  money  available;  and  this  fact,  combined  with  a  denial  to  the  able- 
bodied,  of  any  right  to  relief  under  any  circumstances,  and  with  the 
general  absence  of  properly  constituted  workhouses,  in  which  adequacy 
of  relief  might  be  secured,  led  to  a  rigid  ecouomy  which  entailed  some- 
times very  great  suffering  and  privation  among  the  poorer  classes.  In 
consequence  of  this  state  of  things,  and  also,  no  doubt,  owing  to  the 
example  of  the  new  English  Poor  Law,  the  Scotch  Poor  Law  Amend- 
ment Act,  1845,  was  passed.  This  act  was  directed  mainly  to  the 
supersession  of  the  voluntary  system  of  assessment,  and  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  workhouses,  or  rather  k  poorhouses,'  the  adoption  of 
either  course  being,  however,  still  optional.  The  immediate  result 
was  a  steady  rise  in  the  amount  of  poor  relief,  in  proportion  to  the 
spreading  of  the  operation  of  the  act.  This  was,  nevertheless,  to  be 
expected ;  and  although  the  fluctuations  of  poor  law  expenditure  have 
sometimes  caused  alarm,  the  principle  of  the  workhouse  test,  with 
compulsory  assessment,  has  been  more  and  more  accepted,  and  at  the 
present  day  may  be  said  to  be  firmly  established  by  experience." 

See  also  R.  P.  Lamond,  The  Scottish  Poor  Laws,  1892,  pp.  227,  228. 


44  IXTKODUCTION 

ment,  with  its  strong  socialistic  tendencies,  is  op- 
posed to  the  substitution  of  private  charity  for  public 
relief. 

What  are  the  chief  reasons  for  the  apparent  failure  of 
the  voluntary  system  of  private  and  church  poor  relief? 
(1)  The  parochial  system  broke  upon  the  rocks  of  sec- 
tarian divisions.*  The  parochial  system  of  the  Scotch 
clergyman  was  inspired  by  the  rural  ideal  of  a  simple 
community  where  the  state  church  commands  the  entire 
field,  and  where  dissent  is  almost  a  negligible  quantity. 
But  modern  cities  have  a  different  character,  especially 
American  cities.  No  one  denomination  is  dominant. 
There  are  as  many  methods  as  there  are  pastors.  The 
sole  institution  which  all  regard  as  common  property  is 
the  state,  or  its  local  representative,  the  municipality. 
The  confusion  of  Babel  reigns  in  the  conflict  of  tongues, 
and  every  distinct  language  carries  with  it  conflict  of 
ecclesiastical  methods. 

Whether  the  experiments  now  being  tried  to  secure 
a  federation  of  churches  of  all  denominations  are  to  suc- 
ceed, time  alone  will  reveal.  Certain  it  is  that  the 
churches  can  never  have  anything  like  a  conspicuous 
share  in  the  direction  of  poor  relief  so  long  as  they  re-' 
main  without  common  and  unified  organization  for  the 
purpose. 

The  reforms  of  the  English  Poor  Law  and  of  its  ad- 
ministration, in  1834  and  later  years,  removed  some  of 

*  James  Bonar,  Malthus  and  His  Work,  p.  180 :  "  His  (Chalmers') 
parochial  system  would  have  been  an  admirable  substitute  for  the 
Poor  Law  on  the  (unfortunately  untrue)  hypothesis  of  an  absence  of 
sects." 


CHALMEKS'    DOCTKIXES    EXAMINED  45 

the  most  objectionable  features  and  cut  the  ground  from 
under  some  of  the  most  severe  criticisms.  Pauperism 
diminished  under  the  application  of  the  severe  workhouse 
test,  more  rigid  investigation,  and  centralized  supervision 
of  local  administration.  Chalmers  prophesied  an  increase 
of  the  burden  even  if  the  system  should  be  modified,  and 
he  thought  it  full  of  incurable  evils;  but  a  more  careful 
and  rational  management  falsified  his  expectations  in 
some  measure  and  broke  the  force  of  his  appeal. 

The  exposure  of  actual  suffering  of  the  poor  in  Scot- 
land about  1844  stirred  the  national  heart  and  conscience 
and  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  English  system  of  com- 
pulsory poor  relief  from  taxation.  Of  course,  the  system 
which  Chalmers  had  in  mind  was  never  fairly  and  fully 
tried.  Perhaps  the  country  was  not  yet  ripe  for  it.  At 
any  rate,  the  public  could  not  and  would  not  endure 
the  spectacle  of  unrelieved  misery  in  cities  where  the 
demoralized  and  inadequate  church  charity  left  thou- 
sands to  starve.  What  might  have  happened  if  the 
churches  had  all  united  in  working  a  voluntary  system 
in  all  parts  of  the  great  towns,  we  can  never  tell.  But 
the  actual  fact  was  that  investigation  revealed  a  mass 
of  distress  most  startling  and  shocking,  and  led  to  the 
adoption  of  legal  measures  to  extend  relief  to  all  who 
were  in  peril  of  starvation. 

The  argument  for  the  abolition  of  official  relief,  on 
the  ground  that  a  fund  raised  by  compulsory  tax  is  not 
true  charity,  since  it  is  compelled  by  legal  force,  was 
shown  to  be  weak  at  the  point  where  Chalmers  admitted 
a  public  support  of  defectives — the  blind,  deaf-mutes,  in- 


46  INTRODUCTION 

sane,  feeble-minded,  the  sick  and  injured.*  Chalmers 
objected  to  the  relief  of  the  aged  poor  on  the  ground 
that  old  age  can  be  foreseen  and  should  be  provided  for 
during  the  earning  period,  and  because  children  should 
care  for  aged  parents.  Sickness  and  accidents  cannot  be 
foreseen,  he  said,  and  therefore  they  may  properly  be 
the  occasion  of  relief  from  public  funds.  But  we  now 
know  that  sickness  and  accident  can  be  foretold  and  the 
average  risk  for  a  trade  or  group  can  be  approximately 
calculated.  And  we  also  know  that,  with,  the  present 
rates  of  wages,  there  is  a  very  large  class  of  the  poor 
who  are  not  able  to  provide  by  individual  saving  either 
for  sickness  or  for  old  age;  that  social  organization  of 
some  kind  is  essential.  For  the  most  needy  and  miserable 
class,  where  the  capacity  for  voluntary  organization  is 
very  low,  no  agency  short  of  the  government  can  cope 
with  the  difficulty.f 

The  doctrine  of  state  duty  to  the  aged  poor  which  is 
rapidly  growing  in  the  modern  mind  is  thus  stated  in 
the  preamble  to  the  Old- Age  Pensions  Act  of  New 
Zealand:  "Whereas,  it  is  equitable  that  deserving  per- 
sons who,  during  the  prime  of  life,  have  helped  to  bear 
the  public  burdens  of  the  colony  by  the  payment  of  taxes, 
and  to  open  up  its  resources  by  their  skill  and  labor, 
should  receive  from  the  colony  a  pension  in  their  old  age, 
Be  it  enacted  .  .  ." 

The  fact  is  that  the  conception  of  the  state  held  by 


*  See  Chapter  XIII. ,  Christian  and  Civic  Economy, 
t  See    Webb,  Problems  of  Modern  Industry,  p.   156  ff. ;    Charles 
Booth,  The  Aged  Poor,  and  Pauperism  and  the  Endowment  of  Old  Age. 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  47 

Chalmers  is  obsolete.  He  shared  the  common  belief  of 
his  time.  Government  was  thought  to  be  something  im- 
posed on  the  people,  and  at  best  a  necessary  evil.  We 
have  come  to  believe  that  government  by  the  people, 
for  the  people  is  their  common  organ  for  securing  wel- 
fare. We  are  returning  to  the  Pauline  conception  that 
government  is  of  the  good  God,  a  ministry  of  good, 
a  terror  to  the  evil  only,  and  for  the  help  of  man.  Jus- 
tice, benevolence,  and  education  may  properly  be  pro- 
moted through  this  agency  as  well  as  through  the  Church, 
and  it  is  simply  a  practical  question  which  is  the  best 
organ  in  given  circumstances  for  the  purpose.  An  act 
is  not  necessarily  good  because  the  Church  does  it,  and 
there  are  many  acts  of  government  which  are  good  even 
when  judged  from  the  highest  standards.  The  social 
democrat  naturally  prefers  the  government  agency,  be- 
cause there  is  no  patronage.  The  Christian  may  co-op- 
erate with  the  unbelieving  democrat  in  legal  measures, 
because  the  State  to  him  is  providential  and  clothed  with 
religious  sanctions. 

The  parochial  system  under  consideration  had  a  fatal 
weakness;  it  was  based  on  the  idea  that  the  people  of 
a  city  district  should  provide  altogether  for  the  depen- 
dent families  of  that  district.  This  principle  is  suitable 
for  a  rural  parish  where  there  is  little  abject  poverty  and 
where  the  resources  of  the  neighborhood  are  ample.  But 
our  modern  cities  pack  their  very  poor  in  wretched  neigh- 
borhoods, while  the  comfortable  and  rich  families  reside 
in  elegant  quarters  and  delightful  suburbs,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible from  the  filthy  streets  and  squalid  tenements  of 


48  INTRODUCTION 

the  poor.  The  purely  parochial  system,  under  such  con- 
ditions, is  a  mockery.  It  lays  the  burden  of  the  miser- 
able all  upon  those  who  are  already  almost  submerged. 
It  would  relieve  the  well-to-do  from  all  sense  of  responsi- 
bility for  those  whose  income  is,  for  any  reason,  inade- 
quate for  support,  and  it  would  encourage  them  to  forget 
the  destitute  who  belong  in  another  parish.  There  is 
enough  of  the  spirit  of  suburban  cowardice  and  selfish- 
ness already;  it  does  not  require  help  from  high  philan- 
thropic authority. 

Dr.  Chalmers  started  from  the  right  principle,  that  it 
is  well  to  cultivate  a  small  field  thoroughly  and  hope  for 
imitation.  But  his  plan  did  not  provide  for,  and  actually 
rejected  in  express  terms,  central  organization  for  an 
entire  city.  The  German  municipal  system  and  that  of 
the  Charity  Organization  Society  have  avoided  this  error. 
They  both  retain  his  valuable  principle  of  "  locality,"  but 
they  also  provide  for  a  central  office  which  may  serve 
as  a  mediating  agency  for  all  the  separate  districts,  and 
they  ask  financial  and  personal  help  from  those  most 
competent  and  responsible.  The  history  of  municipal  life 
emphasizes  the  solidarity  and  community  interest  of  the 
city  as  one  organism,  one  united  society. 

The  Parochial  System  of  Elementary  Schools.— Chal- 
mers was  led  by  the  circumstances  of  contemporary  so- 
ciety to  look  to  local  voluntary  associations  and  the  fee 
system  for  the  support  of  primary  education.  His  dis- 
trust of  state  interference  clouded  his  judgment  on  this 
point,  and,  indeed,  governments  were  not  yet  ripe  for 
the  full  task  of  universal  free  education  of  the  people. 


CHALMEKS'   DOCTRINES   EXAMINED  49 

He  thought  that  each  parish  in  a  city  could  not  only 
provide  for  all  its  poor,  but  also  pay  a  part  of  the  cost 
of  tuition,  and  he  believed  that  the  families  of  the  poor 
will  make  better  use  of  schools  if  they  make  a  partial 
provision  for  support  out  of  their  own  scant  means.  This 
doctrine  has  still  some  able  exponents.  But  the  entire 
tendency  of  democracy  is  in  the  direction  of  absolutely 
free  tuition,  with  regulations  of  compulsory  attendance. 
Society  protects  the  common  interest  by  preventing  pau- 
perism, vice,  and  crime.  A  suitable  elementary  educa- 
tion is  absolutely  necessary  for  social  defence,  and  it  is 
cheaper  than  reformatories  and  prisons.  Democracy  be- 
lieves that  the  community  is  under  moral  obligations  to 
offer  equal  opportunities  of  education  to  all  young  citi- 
zens. Universal  suffrage  gives  this  demand  the  force  of 
the  entire  population.  The  wealth  of  a  people  must  sup- 
port and  educate  the  people,  and  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  absolutely  private  property.  Public  necessities  must 
be  met  from  public  funds.  These  must  be  raised  equi- 
tably, according  to  the  financial  ability  of  the  owners 
of  wealth,  and  not  by  excessive  drafts  on  a  small  number 
of  willing  philanthropists. 

Chalmers  has  made  some  wise  and  suggestive  remarks, 
of  permanent  value,  in  respect  to  the  function  of  volun- 
tary associations  and  of  wealthy  philanthropists  in  edu- 
cation. The  pioneer  and  experimental  movements  are 
the  suitable  field  for  private  benevolent  enterprise.  Illus- 
trations may  be  drawn  from  the  early  establishment  of 
primary  schools  in  Great  Britain  and  America ;  from  the 

movements  for  establishing  kindergartens,  day  nurseries, 
4 


50  INTRODUCTION 

workingmen's  clubs,  social  settlements,  college  and  uni- 
versity extension,  and  other  forms  of  frontier  experimen- 
tation and  leadership.  "When  a  movement  has  passed  the 
stage  of  hypothesis  and  experiment  to  assured  success,  it 
may  be  "  taken  over  "  by  the  municipality  or  common- 
wealth, if  it  can  be  reduced  to  a  degree  of  routine,  is 
supported  by  public  sentiment,  and  is  otherwise  adapted 
to  the  machinery  of  governmental  administration. 

State  Support  of  the  Church. — Chalmers  was  born 
into  the  State  Church.  He  was  brought  up  to  believe  that 
it  is  natural,  just,  and  desirable  to  support  religious  agen- 
cies by  funds  derived  from  taxation.  In  several  of  his 
works  he  employs  arguments  to  justify  and  enforce  this 
belief.  To  American  readers  this  argument  is  a  historic 
curiosity,  but  it  is  by  no  means  obsolete  in  Europe.  Our 
author  is  quite  confident  that  the  State  has  no  right  to 
regulate  manufactures  and  trade,  or  to  aid  the  laborer, 
because  all  men  actually  desire  and  voluntarily  seek 
such  material  goods  as  food,  clothes,  houses  and  various 
comforts. 

But  the  people,  he  claims,  do  not  want  religion,  at  least 
until  it  has  been  urged  upon  them  by  the  ruling  classes. 
Therefore  the  government,  which  then  meant  the  "  up- 
per classes,"  should  provide  ministers  and  edifices. 

Before  his  death  Dr.  Chalmers  learned  many  things 
on  this  subject.  By  experience  with  politicians  who  rep- 
resented legal  authority,  he  found  that  a  government  will 
not  maintain  the  Church  without  control  of  the  manner 
in  which  the  public  funds  are  used.  This  implies  control 
of  the  appointment  of  ministers.  Bitter  personal  expe- 


CHALMERS'    DOCTRINES    EXAMINED  51 

rience  demonstrated  that  this  inevitable  and  logical  action 
of  government  is  fatal  to  that  freedom  of  life  which  is 
essential  to  an  aggressive,  sincere,  and  successful  evan- 
gelical service.  A  free  church  must  be  a  self -supporting 
church. 

Another  lesson  came  to  Chalmers  as  a  joyful  surprise: 
that  the  people,  even  very  poor  people,  will  cheerfully 
and  liberally  support  their  own  churches  if  they  believe 
in  them;  and  that  a  faithful,  energetic,  popular  ministry 
need  have  no  fear  of  being  abandoned.  Even  before  he 
left  the  Establishment,  Dr.  Chalmers  led  in  a  great  and 
successful  movement  to  augment  the  financial  resources 
of  the  Church  from  voluntary  contributions,  after  many 
appeals  to  government  had  brought  meagre  results. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  that  the  positions  held  by  Dr. 
Chalmers  have  been  exactly  reversed.  He  pleaded  for 
support  of  religion  by  taxation,  but  rejected  State  help 
for  industry  and  relief  of  the  poor.  Our  generation  is 
inclined  to  leave  church  support  entirely  to  voluntary 
gifts  of  believers,  but  aids  the  workingman  with  factory 
legislation,  with  relief  of  dependents,  and  with  free 
schools. 

Change  in  the  Character  of  Urban  Populations. — Dr. 
Chalmers  draws  a  picture  of  the  pastor  or  Sunday-school 
teacher  going  forth  among  the  poor  of  a  large  Scotch  or 
English  town  to  invite  the  children  of  the  poor  to  the 
local  assembly  of  worship.  They  meet  everywhere  a  cor- 
dial welcome  and  reverential  treatment.  This  was  his 
experience.  The  religious  meeting  could  be  made  a  cen- 
tre of  common  life  in  the  large  town. 


52  INTRODUCTION 

Within  certain  limits  this  is  still  true.  Kindness  and 
courtesy  are  generally  met  by  a  friendly  response,  where 
the  visitor  is  not  an  intruder  and  is  tactful.  But  the 
modern  workingmen,  especially  in  American  cities  of  the 
Northern  States,  in  this  generation,  manifest  quite  dif- 
ferent traits.  Our  people  are  no  longer  homogeneous 
in  language,  in  customs,  in  religious  beliefs.  A  "  down- 
town "  district  will  reveal  to  the  canvasser  that  the  fami- 
lies are  Protestant,  Catholic,  Jewish,  and  Confucian; 
English,  Irish,  German,  Italian,  Polish,  Hebrew.  It  is 
not  unusual  for  the  most  tactful  and  zealous  missionaries, 
even  when  they  understand  the  languages  of  the  district, 
to  be  utterly  unable,  after  years  of  earnest  labor,  to  make 
much  visible  impression  on  certain  elements  of  the  popu- 
lation. They  will  not  mingle;  they  will  not  make  the 
"  mission  "  a  place  of  common  resort.  They  are  quickly 
sensitive  and  watchful  in  respect  to  patronage,  and  refuse 
to  be  obsequious.  To  prove  that  they  are  "  just  as  good 
as  anyone  "  they  will  sometimes  send  the  visitor  away 
with  a  stinging  rebuke.  Agnosticism  has  taken  deep  root 
in  some  places,  but  the  chief  obstacle  is  religious,  lin- 
guistic, and  social  differences.  The  discovery  of  this  dif- 
ficulty has  promoted  the  establishment  of  social  settle- 
ments which  seek  to  shake  off  suggestions  of  "  charity  " 
and  "  missions,"  and  to  bring  people  into  genuinely  dem- 
ocratic relations.* 

*  See  C.  R.  Henderson,  Social  Settlements. 


IV 

SOME  OF  THE  IMPORTANT  CONTRIBUTIONS 
OF  DR.  CHALMERS  TO  MODERN  SOCIAL 
MOVEMENTS  OF  THOUGHT  AND  ACTION 

IN  the  Field  of  Political  Economy. — It  cannot  be 
claimed  that  our  author  made  any  very  important  origi- 
nal contribution  to  economic  or  political  theory.  He  does 
not  rank  among  the  creative  men  in  these  departments 
of  science.  In  an  individual  and  independent  spirit  he 
uses  the  works  of  Adam  Smith,  Malthus,  and  Ricardo. 
He  is  a  popularizer  of  the  economic  orthodoxy  of  his 
time,  and  his  purpose  is,  as  he  himself  declares,  entirely 
practical.  He  has  not  in  mind  the  organization  of  a 
system  of  explanatory  thought,  but  of  a  system  of  action 
for  the  betterment  of  the  character  and  condition  of  the 
working  classes  and  of  the  very  poor.  This  direct  prac- 
tical purpose  is  explicitly  stated  in  both  the  works  which 
are  here  under  more  immediate  consideration.  The  pur- 
pose of  writing  determines  the  selection  and  the  arrange- 
ment of  materials.  His  books  are  pleas  with  church 
leaders,  special  arguments  to  persuade  them  to  adopt  a 
specific  policy  of  teaching,  city  missionary  service,  and 
relief  of  the  destitute.  He  also  seeks  to  influence  the 
associations  of  workingmen,  the  legislators,  and  the  parish 

53 


54  INTRODUCTION 

and  urban  administrators  of  poor  relief.  He  has  an  am- 
bition to  overturn  the  English  system  of  poor  laws;  and 
this  wider  outlook  compels  him  to  seek  for  general  prin- 
ciples, social  laws  which  have  a  more  than  provincial 
significance. 

While  Chalmers  is  not  an  original  authority  in  eco- 
nomic theory,  he  is  an  independent  thinker  and  a  power- 
ful writer.  He  has  been  recognized  with  respect  in  the 
history  of  the  science  as  one  who  has  brought  out  certain 
elements  into  clearer  light  than  any  other  author.  The 
necessity  of  making  himself  understood  by  a  popular 
audience  gave  an  advantage  in  point  of  style  and  manner 
of  statement  which  reacted  on  thinking  itself  and  made 
it  more  precise  at  some  points,  although  the  exactness  of 
technical  language  had  sometimes  to  be  sacrificed. 

An  article  in  the  "  Handwb'rterbuch  der  Staatswissen- 
schaften  "  expresses  this  judgment:  "  By  laying  strong 
emphasis  on  the  importance  of  Christianity  in  industrial 
life,  Chalmers  has  earned  credit  in  our  field.  In  general, 
however,  he  follows  the  reigning  economic  views.  He 
is  a  follower  of  Bicardo,  but  above  all  a  zealous  advocate 
of  Malthus'  doctrine  of  population.  He  recommends 
the  transformation  of  all  taxes  into  the  single  land-tax, 
without,  however,  accepting  the  physiocratic  basis  for 
his  demand." 

The  opinion  of  Dr.  Hanna,  technically  not  so  valuable 
as  that  just  quoted,  is  more  favorable :  "  As  a  political 
economist  he  was  the  first  to  unfold  the  connection  that 
subsists  between  the  fertility  of  the  soil  and  the  social 
condition  of  the  community,  the  rapid  manner  in  which 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  55 

capital  is  reproduced,  and  the  general  doctrine  of  a  limit 
to  all  the  modes  by  which  national  wealth  may  accumu- 
late." * 

John  Stuart  Mill,  after  giving  an  explanation  of  the 
rapid  reproduction  of  wealth  destroyed  by  fire,  wars,  and 
other  great  calamities,  adds  a  remark  which  gives  his  esti- 
mate of  our  author:  "  This  simple  explanation  was  never 
given  (so  far  as  I  am  aware)  by  any  political  economist 
before  Dr.  Chalmers,  a  writer  many  of  whose  opinions  I 
think  erroneous,  but  who  has  always  the  merit  of  studying 
phenomena  at  first  hand  and  expressing  in  a  language  of 
his  own,  which  often  uncovers  aspects  of  the  truth  that  the 
received  phraseologies  only  tend  to  hide."  f 

In  his  valuable  treatise,  "  A  History  of  Political  Econ- 
omy," Dr.  Ingram  has  this  to  say:  "  Thus  Chalmers  re- 
views seriatim  and  gravely  sets  aside  all  the  schemes 
usually  proposed  for  the  amelioration  of  the  economic 
condition  of  the  people,  on  the  ground  that  an  increase 
of  comfort  will  lead  to  an  increase  of  numbers,  and  so 
the  last  state  of  things  will  be  worse  than  the  first."  This 
does  not  seem  to  be  an  adequate  statement,  although  it 
is  partly  justified  by  some  expressions  of  Chalmers.  It 
is  true  that  the  "  orthodox  "  economists  who  followed 
Malthus  were  very  sceptical  as  to  the  result  of  an  increase 
of  wages,  because  they  feared  that  the  members  of  the 
working-classes  would  match  increased  production  with 
more  than  corresponding  supply  of  consumers.  But  full 

*  Article  Chalmers,  in  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 

t  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  I.,  p.  110.  New  York,  1884.  Com- 
pare L.  Cossa,  The  Study  of  Political  Economy,  pp.  329,  333.  New 
York,  1893.  Boscher,  Political  Economy,  Sees.  216,  217,  242. 


56  INTRODUCTION 

justice  requires  us  to  add  that  Chalmers  did  not  regard 
this  conduct  as  necessary.  He  shows  that  in  Scotland, 
among  the  poor  peasants,  just  such  continence  as  he  ad- 
vised was  common  in  the  days  before  poor  laws  injured 
their  self-reliance  and  foresight,  and  he  wrote  on  purpose 
to  persuade  the  working-people  that  the  low  condition 
of  wages  was  not  inevitable  and  fatal,  and  that  they  could, 
by  determining  the  supply  of  laborers,  set  the  rate  of 
their  income.  He  demonstrates  his  confidence  in  the 
hopefulness  of  their  cause  by  developing  a  system  of  edu- 
cational, religious,  and  economic  devices  for  improving 
character,  conduct,  and  material  prosperity. 

A  Social  Science  Anticipated. — It  may  fairly  be 
claimed  that  Chalmers  assisted,  in  some  degree,  in  pre- 
paring the  way  for  sociology  as  the  science  which  seeks 
to  co-ordinate  the  results  of  special  social  sciences,  espe- 
cially economics,  politics,  ecclesiastical  polity,  educational 
and  charitable  administration.  In  seeking  a  systematic 
basis  of  principles  for  social  reform  he  was  compelled  to 
abandon  the  method  of  abstraction  often  employed  in  eco- 
nomics and  politics,  and  look  at  the  actual  concrete  com- 
plex of  social  relations  in  their  unity  and  synthesis.  The 
word  "  sociology  "  had  not  yet  been  suggested,  but,  in  the 
effort  to  select  a  word  to  describe  his  scientific  aim,  he 
happily  hits  more  than  once  upon  the  epithet  "  politics  " 
and  employs  it  almost  in  the  Greek  sense  to  cover  the 
entire  unity  of  social  relations  and  associations  in  a  com- 
munity— something  far  more  comprehensive  and  deeper 
than  government,  law,  or  administration.  This  defini- 
tion of  "  politics  "  makes  it  very  nearly  equivalent  to 
"  sociology." 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  57 

Sometimes  he  employs  the  expression  "  moral  "  to  dis- 
tinguish the  idea  of  community  obligations — domestic, 
political,  educational,  ecclesiastical.  The  time  was  not 
yet  ripe  for  the  clear  discovery  of  a  method  or  discipline 
for  the  co-ordination  of  the  data  supplied  by  the  subordi- 
nate sciences — biology,  psychology,  economics,  politics, 
comparative  religion,  philology,  anthropology,  ethnology, 
because  these  sciences  were  themselves  in  an  early  stage 
of  formation,  as  sociology  is  now. 

But  it  was  much  to  show  the  need  for  this  larger 
outlook  and  to  assist  in  attaining  it.  Every  science  has 
had  its  beginnings  in  practical  efforts  to  gain  certain 
goods  or  desirable  results,  to  remove  obstacles  and  avoid 
evils,  and  to  find  a  way  through  a  new  environment.  In 
this  practical  struggle  the  law  of  the  process  reveals  itself 
to  men  of  philosophic  mind,  and  then  theory  helps  to 
illumine  the  road  for  all  succeeding  workers;  science  pays 
the  debt  it  owes  to  the  practical  man,  and  pays  with  gen- 
erous interest. 

The  Scotch  divine  possessed,  in  very  high  degree,  the 
gifts  of  the  pioneer  practical  worker  and  the  reflective 
philosopher.  Mr.  Quick,  in  his  "  Educational  Reform- 
ers," says:  "It  is  rather  jumping  at  conclusions  to  as- 
sume, with  some  of  our  countrymen,  that  if  a  man  does 
not  think,  he  does  act.  ...  A  good  many  men  who 
do  not  expend  energy  in  thought  are  by  no  means  strong 
in  action.  In  education  they  have  no  desire  either  to 
think  the  best  in  thought  or  to  do  the  best  that  is  done. 
They  won't  inquire  about  either,  and  they  show  the  most 
impartial  ignorance  of  both."  Happy  is  the  nation  and 


58  INTRODUCTION 

age  whose  influential  leaders  combine  the  love  of  social 
science  with  the  love  of  man ;  who  seek  truth  for  truth's 
sake,  and  also  for  man's  sake,  with  the  reasonable  belief 
that  no  permanent  good  can  rest  on  falsehood,  and  that 
all  really  great  discoveries  in  theory  must  eventually  min- 
ister to  the  welfare  of  the  race.  Chalmers  certainly  as- 
sisted in  the  creation  of  a  science  of  social  welfare  by 
the  largeness  of  his  views  and  the  rich  contents  of  his 
ideals. 

In  the  Science  and  Art  of  Charity. — Here  we  may 
claim  a  distinguished  place  for  Dr.  Chalmers.  In  the  Ger- 
man literature  of  the  Inner  Mission  and  of  the  Elberfeld 
system  of  municipal  poor  relief  we  frequently  come  upon 
his  name,  and  it  is  mentioned  always  with  profound  re- 
spect. The  Inner  Mission,  as  an  organized  system,  dates 
from  the  epoch-making  speeches  of  Johann  Wichern  at 
the  revolutionary  period  of  1848-49.* 

The  Elberfeld  system  was  organized  in  1852  by  a 
magistrate  and  a  parson.  It  was  a  development  of  earlier 
German  methods,  with  improvements;  but  it  owed  much 
to  the  then  well-known  experiments  of  Chalmers  in  .as 
parochial  labors  in  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh. 

The  Charity  Organization  Society  was  first  established 
in  London  in  1868,  and  its  methods  were  introduced  into 
the  United  States  at  Buffalo,  by  an  English  clergyman, 
Rev.  S.  H.  Gurteen,  in  1877. 

Each  of  these  great  social  movements  naturally  grew 

*  See  articles  on  the  German  Inner  Mission,  American  Journal  of 
Sociology,  1896,  by  C.  R.  Henderson ;  Schaefer,  Leitfaden  der  inneren 
Mission;  Wurster,  Die  Lehre  von  der  inneren  Mission;  Williams, 
Church  and  State  in  Germany. 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  59 

out  of  the  past,  and  drew  suggestions  from  many  sources. 
But  at  certain  points  they  were  indebted  directly  to  Chal- 
mers not  only  for  hints  of  method,  but  also  for  the  clear 
demonstration  of  successful  experiment.  The  power  of 
the  example  is  by  no  means  near  exhaustion,  and  it  will 
be  better  appreciated  by  the  public  in  the  coming  cen- 
tury than  it  ever  has  been  in  the  past. 

After  having  explained  the  failure  of  Chalmers  in 
the  preceding  pages,  it  may  seem  at  first  sight  absurd 
now  to  present  his  parochial  system  as  the  model  for 
church  and  charity  workers.  The  fact  is,  he  did  not  fail. 
His  plan  was  a  local  success.  His  principles  were  sound 
and  enduring.  His  personal  administration  was  marvel- 
lous. It  was  society  which  failed,  because  it  was  not  yet 
ripe  for  his  noble  ideal  of  a  world  without  a  pauper. 
Economic  conditions  are  too  low  for  the  complete  work- 
ing of  his  method.  Compromises  must  be  made  with 
inferior  machinery.  The  time  may  come  when  the  vital 
principles  of  the  system  will  be  triumphantly  vindicated, 
and  already  they  are  commanding  increasing  assent  and 
imitation. 

Social  conditions  are  ever  changing.  Particular 
schemes  and  devices  must  regard  these  changes.  But 
permanent  laws  direct  the  movements  and  great  ideals 
shine  aloft  like  stars.  We  must  ever  distinguish  between 
the  abiding  principles  and  the  transitory  methods.  With- 
out claiming  entire  originality  for  Chalmers,  we  may 
affirm  that  he  placed  them  in  clear  light,  urged  them 
with  persuasive  eloquence,  and  demonstrated  their  value 
by  the  scientific  process  of  verification  by  costly  and  self- 
sacrificing  experiment. 


60  INTRODUCTION 

One  of  the  most  fruitful  ideas  in  the  literary  and  pas- 
toral work  of  Chalmers  was  that  of  the  "  principle  of 
locality."  He  urged,  by  word  and  deed,  that  the  best 
philanthropic  service  is  rendered  to  a  community  by  those 
who  map  out  a  small  district  and  cultivate  it  intensively 
and  thoroughly.  This  principle  is  an  essential  factor  in 
the  German  system  of  municipal  relief,  in  the  Charity 
Organization  Society,  in  the  Social  Settlements,  and  in 
the  Federation  of  Churches.  They  all  aim  at  a  thorough 
pervasion  of  the  entire  life  of  the  families  in  a  limited 
district.  Dr.  E.  Muensterberg,  head  of  the  relief  ad- 
ministration of  Berlin,  urges  "  decentralization "  of 
charities  and  the  building  up  of  groups  of  trained 
visitors  who  are  thoroughly  acquainted  with  a  given 
area. 

Closely  connected  with  the  principle  of  locality  is  that 
of  personal  service — "  friendly  visiting,"  in  recent  phrase. 
His  message  on  this  subject  is  still  vital,  fresh,  and  neces- 
sary. People  who  live  in  an  age  of  absorbing  mercan- 
tile interest  are  only  too  apt  to  be  swayed  by  the  feeling 
that  money  can  buy  any  form  of  good;  that  material 
relief  is  all  that  the  poor  need  and  want;  that  purely 
spiritual  service  has  no  value  and  will  not  be  appreciated. 
There  is  a  constant  tendency  in  the  undiscriminating 
popular  mind  to  identify  "  charity  "  with  gifts  of  soup, 
meat,  clothes,  and  rent  payments.  Chalmers  had  learned 
from  the  Scriptures,  from  church  history,  and  from  suc- 
cessful pastoral  labors,  that  we  may  win  the  confidence, 
the  gratitude,  and  the  devotion  of  multitudes  of  the  peo- 
ple without  coarse  bribes;  and  that  the  distributor  of 


CHALMEES'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODEKN  THOUGHT  61 

alms  is  very  apt  to  attract  the  indolent  and  hypocritical 
while  he  repels  those  who  struggle  nobly  with  hard  con- 
ditions in  order  to  avoid  dependence  and  have  a  little  over 
for  spiritual  ends.  He  showed  by  trial  that  good  men 
and  gracious  women  could  draw  to  themselves  and  their 
cause  great  companies  of  wage-earners,  in  the  most 
wretched  quarters  of  a  city,  simply  by  visiting  their 
homes  as  neighbors  on  errands  for  savings-banks,  local 
libraries,  Sunday-schools,  and  other  common  social  in- 
terests. 

Even  in  such  purely  mechanical  parts  of  charity  work 
as  making  investigations  and  records,  Chalmers  showed 
great  sagacity  and  practical  sense.  In  recent  forms  of 
philanthropic  organization,  the  value  of  complete  knowl- 
edge and  registration  of  information  is  recognized.  These 
methods  enabled  the  parish  officers  to  reduce  the  burden 
of  relief  and  to  act  directly  and  wisely  instead  of  stum- 
bling about  in  the  dark. 

The  great  and  absorbing  purpose  of  Chalmers  was  to 
"  abolish  pauperism,"  that  form  of  poor  relief  which 
draws  its  funds  from  taxation  and  is  administered  by 
government.  In  previous  paragraphs  we  have  seen  the 
immediate  failure  of  this  vast  design.  In  a  certain  sense 
the  immediate  abolition  of  this  out-door  public  relief  is 
impracticable.  Under  present  conditions  it  is  very  gen- 
erally necessary  to  prevent  great  suffering,  and  it  will 
probably  be  a  long  time  before  modern  communities  will 
be  ready  to  cut  it  off  altogether.  And  yet  the  world  is 
making  progress  toward  the  goal  which  Chalmers  held  be- 
fore his  mind.  He  was  right  in  declaring  that  the  relation 


62  INTRODUCTION 

of  dependence  upon  public  charity  is  essentially  degrad- 
ing. It  is  at  best  only  a  little  better  than  death  or  crime, 
at  least  for  many  who  depend  upon  it.  The  administra- 
tors of  the  English  and  of  the  German  system  have  al- 
ways sought  methods  of  reducing  this  most  dangerous 
form  of  relief  to  its  lowest  terms.  They  restrict  the  help 
to  those  who  are  actually  unable  to  work.  In  England 
the  disagreeable  alternative  of  the  workhouse  is  offered 
to  able-bodied  dependents  who  seek  relief,  in  order  to 
make  it  as  distasteful  as  possible.  In  Germany  less  re- 
liance is  placed  on  the  rude  and  severe  workhouse  test 
and  more  on  the  influence  and  tactful  help  of  visitors  who 
strive  to  induce  and  assist  the  poor  to  avoid  resting  upon 
public  funds. 

But  these  negative  and  individual  schemes  for  reduc- 
ing out-door  relief  are  not  entirely  satisfactory.  It  is 
demonstrable  that  much  of  the  dependence  of  the  pau- 
pers is  due  to  excessively  low  wages,  to  evil  sanitary  con- 
ditions, and  to  unusual  calamities.  Hence  modern  states 
are  seeking  in  all  possible  ways  to  provide  by  insurance 
funds  for  times  of  accident,  sickness,  and  old  age,  with- 
out application  to  public  charity.  A  great  part  of  the 
motive  in  establishing  workingmen's  insurance  is  to  re- 
strict the  extent  of  relief,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  de- 
grading, even  when  kindly  administered. 

Of  course,  it  is  found  that  many  of  those  who  become 
paupers  have  really  led  a  criminal  career.  The  problem 
of  caring  for  these  should  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
that  of  poor  relief,  and  especially  from  the  problem  of 
wage-workers.  The  correctional  and  custodial  activity 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  63 

of  government  should  control  the  life  of  those  who  arc 
addicted  to  vice  and  crime.  A  system  of  workhouses, 
agricultural  colonies,  and  asylums  for  the  perverted  and 
feeble-minded  is  gradually  being  developed  in  Europe 
and  America.  When  this  system  has  been  made  com- 
plete and  effective  through  police  administration,  a  very 
considerable  part  of  the  pauper  class  will  be  removed 
from  the  rolls  of  charity. 

That  the  abolition  of  public  out-door  relief  in  Ameri- 
can cities  is  practicable,  and  by  no  means  visionary,  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  Brooklyn,  New  York  City,  and 
Philadelphia  several  years  ago  closed  up  this  department 
of  relief  and  have  found  private  charity  entirely  com- 
petent to  meet  all  needs  of  this  kind,  with  no  more  suf- 
fering than  would  occur  under  the  old  system.  It  is  too 
early  to  predict  the  ultimate  outcome  of  these  tendencies. 
But  the  fundamental  principle  of  Chalmers  is  meeting 
wider  and  wider  acceptance:  the  income  of  an  industry 
ought  to  be  the  support  of  the  industrious  members  of 
that  industry;  upon  all  who  steal  and  beg,  corrective 
discipline  should  be  enforced.  After  that,  local  charity, 
carefully  organized,  would  meet  all  needs.  While  the 
leaders  of  the  "  labor  movement "  are  opposed  to  the 
substitution  of  private  almsgiving  for  public  relief,  they 
are  not  in  antagonism  to  any  promising  method  of  abol- 
ishing the  economic  conditions  which  make  pauperism 
necessary.  The  "  industrials  "  the  world  over  declare 
that  they  do  not  want  charity,  but  are  seeking  justice. 
This  intense  and  deepening  hatred  of  dependence  is  a 
sign  of  manliness,  vigor,  sound  moral  health.  Every 


64  INTRODUCTION 

patriot  and  philanthropist  should  greet  this  sentiment 
with  joy  and  hope.  The  social  state  in  which  pauperism 
would  be  no  factor  was  the  one  for  which  Chalmers 
worked.  In  a  limited  space,  under  the  most  trying  and 
discouraging  circumstances,  he  proved  that  it  could  be 
approximately  realized.  Such  an  ideal  will  not  die  out 
of  social  consciousness  and  memory.  It  will  persistently 
reassert  itself  after  every  temporary  defeat.  It  will  be 
a  steady  force  always  pressing  in  the  right  direction. 

The  morbid  element  in  societ}r  is  not  necessarily  per- 
manent. Social  pathology  is  a  subordinate  and  eva- 
nescent side  of  social  science.  Pauperism  must  not  be 
regarded  as  inevitable.  There  are  even  now  higher  func- 
tions for  charity  than  material  relief  of  dependents.  If 
a  nation  were  absolutely  without  a  vagabond  or  a  thief, 
it  could  then  go  forward  with  a  freedom  and  lightness 
of  step  which  is  impossible  while  we  must  carry  the  bur- 
den of  abnormal  men  and  families.  This  is  the  deep 
design  of  the  book  at  whose  portal  we  are  standing. 

There  is  a  limitless  field  for  the  discovery  of  truth, 
for  the  creation  of  beauty,  for  education  of  the  spirit, 
for  worthier  worship.  The  institutions  which  men  have 
erected  to  fulfil  these  ends  are  the  real  and  lasting  field 
of  social  science.  The  close  and  climax  of  our  book  is 
a  discussion,  not  of  pauperism,  but  of  the  sublime  pros- 
pect of  universal  education. 

The  educational  ideal  of  John  Locke  was  the  training 
of  a  "  gentleman  "  for  the  pleasures  and  occupations  of 
a  privileged  class.  Comenius,  the  famous  educator  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  a  Christian  minister,  a  votary 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  65 

of  science,  a  precursor  of  true  democracy,  had  said :  "  Not 
only  are  the  children  of  the  rich  and  noble  to  be  drawn 
to  the  school,  but  all  alike,  gentle  and  simple,  rich  and 
poor,  boys  and  girls,  in  great  towns  and  small,  down  to 
the  country  villages.  And  for  this  reason:  Everyone 
who  is  born  a  human  being  is  born  with  this  intent — 
that  he  should  be  a  human  being,  that  is,  a  reasonable 
creature,  ruling  over  the  other  creatures  and  bearing  the 
likeness  of  his  Maker." 

And  the  great  Pestalozzi's  educational  confession  runs 
thus :  "  From  my  youth  up  I  felt  what  a  high  and  in- 
dispensable human  duty  it  is  to  labor  for  the  poor  and 
miserable,  .  .  .  that  he  may  attain  to  a  consciousness 
of  his  own  dignity  through  his  feeling  of  the  universal 
powers  and  endowments  which  he  possesses  awakened 
within  him;  that  he  may  not  only  learn  to  gabble  over 
by  rote  the  religious  maxim  that  '  man  is  created  in 
the  image  of  God,  and  is  bound  to  live  and  die  as  a 
child  of  God,'  but  may  himself  experience  its  truth  by 
virtue  of  the  divine  power  within  him,  so  that  he  may 
be  raised  not  only  above  the  ploughing  oxen,  but  also 
above  the  man  in  purple  and  silk  who  lives  unworthily 
of  his  high  destiny."  To  this  democratic  group  of  edu- 
cational reformers  the  somewhat  aristocratic  Chalmers 
was  related  by  virtue  of  his  creed,  his  devotion,  his  as- 
pirations, his  ideals. 

The  Influence  of  Chalmers  on  Modern  Methods  of 
Church  Work,  Especially  in  Cities. — During  the  early 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  effects  of  the  "  great 
industry  "  were  seen  in  the  rapid  growth  of  towns.  Man- 


66  INTRODUCTION 

ufactures  were  gathering  the  people  into  large  masses  and 
crowding  them  together  in  vast  hives.  The  capitalistic 
organization  of  industry  was  breaking  down  the  class  of 
independent  hand-workers  who  made  goods  in  their  homes 
and  was  building  up  a  separate  economic  class  of  wage- 
workers  who  were  "  stripped  of  property  and  tools,  and 
had  nothing  to  sell  but  their  labor."  The  familiar  social 
divisions  of  rural  communities,  those  which  separated  and 
distinguished  the  members  of  the  land-owning  class  from 
laborers  on  the  farms,  were  fading.  The  wage-earners 
were  already  coming  to  "  class  consciousness  "  and  op- 
posing their  interests  to  those  of  the  upper  classes  who 
still  reserved  to  themselves  the  suffrage,  the  function  of 
government,  and  the  privileges  of  education. 

Chalmers  shows  distinctly  that  this  new  class  of  wage- 
workers  had  already  broken  away  from  the  Church  and 
had  become  bitter,  hostile,  alienated  from  the  governing, 
privileged,  and  professional  classes.  The  Church  must 
win  them  back  or  see  them  become  practically  heathen 
and  foreigners. 

Chalmers  did  not  regard  this  class  hostility  as  desir- 
able or  tolerable;  he  sought  to  make  religion  a  moral 
bond  by  personal  mediation  of  living  representatives  of 
the  sacred  and  elevated  influences  of  the  higher  life.  The 
central  principle  of  his  evangelizing  scheme  was  the  same 
as  that  of  his  relief  method — the  "  principle  of  locality." 
He  saw  the  significance  of  the  neighborhood  for  philan- 
thropy, education,  and  religion.  The  teacher  and  the 
pastor  must  be  identified  with  the  people  of  a  definite 
district.  No  one  must  be  an  absentee  spiritual  landlord 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  67 

who  draws  his  revenue  from  an  office,  but  does  not  give 
his  whole  life  to  the  people  of  his  field. 

Another  principle  on  which  our  author  insisted  was 
that  a  numerous  ministry,  clerical  and  lay,  must  be  pro- 
vided for  these  neglected  districts  of  cities.  The  hen's 
brood  must  not  be  too  large  for  her  wings  to  cover  with 
protection,  warmth,  and  maternal  care.  The  flock  must 
not  be  so  large  that  the  shepherd  cannot  call  each  sheep 
by  name.  The  voice  of  the  stranger  will  they  not  follow. 
Hence  the  great  significance  of  the  army  of  Sunday-school 
teachers  whom  Chalmers  boldly  defended  against  the 
"  moderates  " — the  "  ice-cream  of  society,"  who  raised 
a  fashionable  outcry  of  disdain  against  these  "  methodist- 
ical  "  schemes.  In  our  modern  urban  churches,  especially 
among  the  poor,  we  are  learning  the  necessity  of  having 
assistant  pastors,  visitors,  nurses,  deaconesses,  mission- 
aries, Bible  readers,  and  voluntary  teachers.  The  pastor 
of  a  large  congregation  in  a  parish  of  several  thousand 
souls  is  discouraged  and  dismayed  to  see  the  thoughtless, 
impulsive  and  tempted  straying  away  from  the  fold,  and 
he  utterly  unable  to  watch  over  them  personally,  when 
a  single  wise  word  from  a  friend,  at  the  right  moment, 
might  win  them  back  to  safety  and  honor. 

Chalmers  established  what  would  now  be  called  "  in- 
stitutional "  churches.  He  recognized  the  solidarity  of 
human  interests.  To  him  the  day-school,  the  savings- 
bank,  the  library,  the  sociable  assembly  were  ministra- 
tions which  the  Church  owed  to  those  whose  lives  were 
bare  and  meagrely  supplied  with  spiritual  goods. 

Social  Settlements. — The  social  settlement  movement 


68  INTRODUCTION 

owes  much  to  the  teaching  and  work  of  Chalmers.  In 
charity,  education,  and  evangelization  his  "  principle  of 
locality  "  or  neighborhood  relationship,  was  dominant  and 
directive.  He  also  urged  the  importance  of  actual  resi- 
dence of  the  spiritual  leader  among  the  people  of  a  neigh- 
borhood, so  that  they  may  be  actually  and  sympathetically 
in  touch  with  all  the  factors  which  affect  the  people. 

The  Influence  of  Chalmers  on  the  Curriculum  of 
Theological  Seminaries. — The  teaching  opportunity  of 
the  Church  is  great  beyond  calculation.  While  the  com- 
mon school  has  many  advantages,  the  Church  has  access 
to  the  public  mind  and  heart  in  a  multitude  of  ways  pe- 
culiarly its  own.  It  is  true  that  the  newspaper,  the  li- 
brary, the  lecture,  the  reading-room,  and  the  club  have 
absorbed  much  of  the  intellectual  life,  and  that  the  pul- 
pit no  longer  has  that  monopoly  of  attention  and  that 
singular  authority  which  it  once  enjoyed.  The  spiritual 
interests  of  society  are  more  varied  and  divided  than  in 
any  former  age.  We  must  also  make  allowance  for  the 
facts  of  scepticism,  anti-clerical  feeling,  and  a  lower  esti- 
mate of  the  saving  efficacy  of  rites  and  ceremonies. 

But,  after  making  all  fair  admissions,  it  remains  true 
that  the  ministry  of  the  Church  holds  professional  leader- 
ship which  involves  responsibility  of  the  highest  order. 
The  decay  of  unquestioning  obedience  to  dogmatic  au- 
thority really  marks  an  advance  in  the  real  influence  of 
the  clergy.  Since  they  are  aware  that  they  cannot  rely 
upon  the  unthinking  acceptance  of  anything  ordained  lips 
may  chance  to  utter,  the  preacher  and  pastor  must  him- 
self value  more  highly  the  nobler  evidences  of  right  to 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  69 

* 

a  hearing,  as  character,  learning,  and  wisdom.  This  new 
requirement  tends  to  produce  a  higher  type  of  man  and 
of  service.  The  indolent,  selfish,  ignorant  parson  becomes 
obsolete.  The  enterprising,  devoted  servant  of  the  best 
life  of  the  people  is  nearer  the  hearts  of  all  than  he  could 
be  if  his  office  and  his  garb  marked  him  off  as  a  ghostly 
visitant  from  a  distant  and  shadowy  world.  The  min- 
istry must  minister,  or  it  denies  the  faith,  and  it  is  un- 
worthy of  the  title.  The  pastor  must  earn  his  salary  by 
real  service. 

This  being  admitted,  the  conscientious  and  consecrated 
pastor  comes  upon  a  very  perplexing  problem:  What  is 
his  social  function,  and,  therefore,  what  is  his  duty?  He 
is  a  herald  of  the  Gospel,  first  of  all,  through  all,  above 
all,  or  he  is  nothing  but  an  intruder  and  pretender.  This 
he  is  by  the  call  of  God  in  his  own  soul,  by  the  solemn 
vows  of  ordination,  and  by  the  reasonable  expectation  of 
the  Church.  This  he  is  by  the  social  law  which  requires 
a  man  to  specialize  his  activity  and  make  himself  an  effi- 
cient workman  in  a  single  field  for  which  he  is  especially 
adapted  by  nature,  and  for  which  he  has  directly  fitted 
himself  by  education. 

At  the  same  time,  all  can  see  that  this  Gospel  has  a 
universal  application;  that  it  has  a  spirit  which  should 
pervade  all  social  activities,  a  law  which  should  dominate 
all  conduct ;  and  that  the  preacher  and  pastor  must  make 
his  flock  constantly  aware  of  the  supreme  right  of  religion 
and  its  ethical  code  to  govern  all  men  in  all  things.  The 
special  function  of  the  preacher  and  pastor  touches  uni- 
versal law  and  supreme  principles  of  love,  justice,  good- 


70  INTRODUCTION 

ness,  social  order,  human  welfare,  and  every  element  and 
application  of  these. 

If  the  minister  neglects  the  central  and  vital  essence 
of  religion  he  descends  to  the  level  of  the  newspaper  and 
the  politician ;  he  dissipates  his  physical  and  spiritual  en- 
ergies; his  professional  studies  become  superficial  and 
unfruitful;  his  sermons  lack  point,  fervency,  and  spirit- 
ual power;  his  pastoral  hours  are  wasted  away  along 
trickling  streams  in  endless  committee  meetings  and  desk 
drudgery,  with  activities  for  which  persons  of  other  tem- 
perament and  training  are  better  fitted;  his  public  utter- 
ances smack  of  the  charlatan. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  construes  his  mission  nar- 
rowly, if  he  confines  his  studies  and  teaching  absolutely 
to  the  development  of  exegesis  of  texts  and  the  enforce- 
ment of  a  theological  system;  if  he  shows  that  he  has  no 
sympathy  with  the  daily  and  hourly  struggle  of  men  for 
bread  and  culture;  if  the  school,  the  hospital,  the  labora- 
tory, the  caucus,  the  council,  the  legislature,  the  army 
and  navy,  the  recreations  and  the  domestic  conduct  are 
utterly  indifferent  to  him,  unknown  to  him;  if  ecclesias- 
tical rites  and  synods  and  conferences  and  meetings  are 
all  the  world  to  him — then  he  becomes  a  mere  profes- 
sional chaplain,  and  he  loses  his  manhood,  his  humanity. 
As  a  recluse  he  may  be  useful  by  contributing  to  theo- 
logical learning.  As  a  devoted  churchman  he  may  have 
a  large  congregation  and  a  growing  membership.  He 
may  win  a  denominational  reputation  for  being  "  success- 
ful." But  is  he  wholly  a  disciple  of  Christ?  Has  he 
done  his  full  duty  to  mankind? 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  TIIOl'CJIIT    71 

In  reconciling  these  stubborn  contradictions  and  .solv- 
ing these  perplexities  of  conscience,  the  work  of  Chal- 
mers offers  important  help.  This  eminent  pastor  and 
preacher  saw  the  difficulty,  was  conscious  of  the  dangers 
on  both  sides,  and  he  reflected  and  wrote  much  on  the 
solution  of  the  problem. 

Chalmers  first  of  all  made  central  truths  central  in  his 
studies,  teaching,  and  pastoral  labors.  He  discriminated 
between  essentials  and  subordinate  elements.  As  a  Chris- 
tian leader  he  placed  his  Lord  in  the  focus  of  every  light- 
beam  of  sermon  and  action.  All  conduct  was  to  be  judged 
by  this  perfect  standard;  all  organizations  must  have 
Christ's  will  for  their  informing  purpose;  all  sermons 
must  carry  the  soul  into  the  divine  presence.  He  early 
found  this  regulative  principle,  and  it  brought  harmony, 
order,  system,  and  cumulative  power  into  his  life  and 
writings. 

Chalmers  knew,  as  an  economist,  the  social  signifi- 
cance of  division  of  labor  in  society,  and  he  pleaded  for 
leisure  for  clergymen,  and  immunity  from  the  unreason- 
able secular  claims  of  urban  life.  He  resented  the  de- 
mands made  in  his  day  upon  city  pastors  for  municipal 
and  other  official  clerical  services  which  could  be  better 
done  by  persons  of  technical  training  for  the  task.  In 
his  plans  of  poor  relief  he  was  careful  to  make  a  division 
of  labor  between  almoners  of  material  relief  and  spiritual 
counsellors  and  guides. 

But,  having  thus  protected  the  ministry  from  dissi- 
pation and  diversion,  he  also  urged  the  principle  that  the 
preacher  should  study  social  relations  and  social  duties, 


72  INTRODUCTION 

and  the  method  by  which  religion  can  sway  and  direct  the 
life  of  the  people  in  daily  life.  It  is  a  small  thing  if  the 
minister  controls  the  acts  of  people  during  the  hour  of 
formal  ceremony  and  worship  on  one  day,  if  they  are  not 
made  to  see  and  feel  that  all  days  and  all  activities  are 
subject  to  the  same  law. 

Arnold  of  Rugby  said:  "  It  is  clear  that  in  whatever 
it  is  our  duty  to  act,  those  matters  also  it  is  our  duty 
to  study."  Wisely  or  foolishly,  helpfully  or  hurtfully, 
the  pastor  must  act  not  only  in  respect  to  the  poor  and 
the  vicious,  but  also  in  respect  to  the  moral  discipline 
of  the  rich  and  the  powerful.  Therefore,  he  ought  to 
study  the  best  that  is  known,  that  he  may  perform  his 
duty  in  the  best  light.  He  is  sure  to  influence  education, 
because  the  Church  owns  schools,  colleges,  and  immense 
endowments.  He  must  deal  with  religious  instruction, 
and  he  must  study  the  aims  and  laws  of  pedagogy,  science, 
and  art,  and  the  social  requirements  of  the  age  in  respect 
to  higher  culture. 

The  famous  "  Astronomical  Discourses "  and  the 
"  Commercial  Discourses  "  are  examples  of  the  way  in 
which  the  eminent  Scotch  preacher  at  once  gave  instruc- 
tion and  turned  this  information  into  parables  of  the 
highest  spiritual  life.  Whether  other  men  should  attempt 
a  similar  task  depends  very  much  on  the  contents  of  their 
minds. 

Chalmers  was  a  pioneer  in  the  movement  to  introduce 
social  studies  into  the  curriculum  of  training  of  pastors. 
He  was  not  absolutely  the  first.  The  Bible  is  full  of  his- 
torical materials  and  of  practical  treatment  of  social  re- 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  7:5 

lations  and  duties.  Some  of  the  early  church  fathers 
had  no  fear  of  becoming  "  unspiritual  "  by  giving  heed 
to  domestic  and  civil  institutions.  Augustine  was  a  man 
of  profound  devotional  life,  and  his  "  City  of  God  "  is 
a  social  philosophy,  an  attempt  to  interpret  Jesus's  idea 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God  to  the  men  of  his  age.  The 
chief  theologian  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Thomas  Aquinas, 
presents  a  system  of  economics,  politics,  and  social  ethics. 
His  social  writings  are  authoritatively  commended  by 
popes  of  this  century  to  the  Roman  Catholic  clergy,  and 
they  are  drawing  the  entire  body  of  these  ecclesiastics 
into  touch  with  the  "  labor  movement." 

Pietism  fled  from  a  perishing  and  hateful  world.  Chal- 
mers thought  real  piety  should  stay  at  its  post  of  duty  in 
the  world,  fight  its  evils,  enhance  its  good,  with  the 
fervor  of  pietism,  the  exactness  of  orthodoxy,  and  the 
devotion  of  martyrs.  He  was  a  living  proof  and  example 
that  a  minister  may  have  all  these  qualities  and  also 
be  acquainted  with  the  essential  doctrines  of  contempo- 
rary social  science.  He  urged  upon  all  ministers  the 
duty  and  advantage  of  these  studies. 

In  his  preface  to  the  "  Political  Economy,"  Chalmers 
wrote :  "  Political  Economy,  though  not  deemed  an  es- 
sential branch  of  education  for  churchmen,  touches  very 
closely,  notwithstanding,  on  certain  questions,  in  which 
both  the  interest  and  the  duty  of  ecclesiastics  are  deeply 
concerned.  The  questions  of  pauperism  and  of  a  Relig- 
ious Establishment,  though  no  others  could  be  specified, 
would  of  themselves  justify  a  reference  to  the  lessons 
and  principles  of  this  science,  even  in  a  theological  course. 


74  INTRODUCTION 

.  .  .  Some  of  the  text  in  this  volume  was  recently 
delivered  in  lectures  to  the  students  of  the  Theological 
Hall  in  Edinburgh.  We  gladly  transfer  them  from  the 
chair  to  the  press,  were  it  for  no  other  reason  than  to 
relieve  our  academic  work,  in  all  time  coming,  even  from 
the  semblance  of  aught  that  is  extra-professional." 

There  is  thus  a  tone  of  half  apology  in  these  words 
and  in  the  note :  "It  may  be  right  to  mention  that  all 
which  we  did  deliver  upon  this  subject  was  in  a  separate 
lectureship  of  one  hour  in  the  week,  distinct  from  the 
regular  lessons  of  the  theological  course,  though  prepara- 
tory to  our  views  on  the  treatment  of  pauperism,  and 
other  questions  in  parish  economics  which  enter  largely 
into  the  duties  and  attentions  of  the  pastoral  care.  It, 
besides,  formed  the  natural  precursor  to  another  lecture- 
ship which  we  have  begun,  on  the  methods  and  the  ma- 
chinery of  Christian  education." 

The  apologetic  tone  may  be  excused  in  the  light  of 
his  example  in  giving  so  wide  an  interpretation  to  "  par- 
ish economics."  The  following  words  deepen  the  im- 
pression of  his  valuation  of  social  studies:  "  We  cannot, 
however,  bid  adieu  to  political  economy,  without  an  ear- 
nest recommendation  of  its  lessons  to  all  those  who  enter 
upon  the  ecclesiastical  vocation.  They  are  our  church- 
men, in  fact,  who  could  best  carry  the  most  important 
of  these  lessons  into  practical  effect.  If  sufficiently  en- 
lightened on  the  question  of  pauperism,  they  might,  with 
the  greatest  ease,  in  Scotland,  clear  away  this  moral  lep- 
rosy from  their  respective  parishes.  And,  standing  at 
the  head  of  Christian  education,  they  are  the  lone  effect- 


CHALMERS'  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MODERN  THOUGHT  75 

ual  dispensers  of  all  those  civil  and  economical  blessings 
which  would  follow  in  its  train." 

Even  now  his  earnest  prayer  has  place  and  meaning: 
"  May  God  of  His  infinite  mercy  grant  that  whatever 
the  coming  changes  in  the  state  and  history  of  these 
nations  may  be,  they  shall  not  be  the  result  of  a  sweep- 
ing and  headlong  anarchy,  but  rather,  in  the  pacific  march 
of  improvement,  may  they  anticipate  this  tremendous  evil 
and  avert  it  from  our  borders.  There  is  a  general  im- 
pression upon  all  spirits  that  something  must  be  done. 
But,  to  be  done  well,  it  must  not  be  by  the  hand  of 
violence,  but  by  the  authority  of  legitimate  power,  under 
the  guidance  of  principle ;  by  a  government  having  both 
the  wisdom  and  righteousness  to  direct  and  the  strength 
to  execute." 


THE 

CHRISTIAN  AND   CIVIC  ECONOMY 
OF  LARGE   TOWNS 

ABRIDGED] 

BY 

THOMAS   CHALMERS,   D.D. 

PROFESSOR  OP  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  ST.  ANDREWS 


PREFACE 

THERE  is  a  great  deal  of  philanthropy  afloat  in  this 
our  day.  At  no  period,  perhaps,  in  the  history  of  the 
human  mind  did  a  desire  for  doing  good,  so  earnest,  meet 
a  spirit  of  inquiry  so  eager,  after  the  best  and  likeliest 
methods  of  carrying  the  desire  into  accomplishment. 
Amid  all  that  looks  dark  and  menacing,  in  the  present 
exhibitions  of  society,  this,  at  least,  must  be  acknowl- 
edged— that  never  was  there  a  greater  quantity  of 
thought  embarked  on  those  speculations  which,  whether 
with  Christian  or  merely  economic  writers,  have  the  one 
common  object  of  promoting  the  worth  and  comfort  of 
our  species. 

It  must  be  confessed,  at  the  same  time,  that  much  of 
this  benevolence,  and  more  particularly,  when  it  aims 
at  some  fulfilment  by  a  combination  of  many  individ- 
uals, is  rendered  abortive  for  want  of  a  right  direction. 
Were  the  misleading  causes  to  which  philanthropy  is  ex- 
posed, when  it  operates  among  a  crowded  assemblage 
of  human  beings,  fully  understood,  then  would  it  cease 
to  be  a  paradox,  .  .  .  why  there  should  either  be  a 
steady  progress  of  wretchedness  in  our  land  in  the  midst 
of  its  charitable  institutions,  or  a  steady  progress  of 
profligacy  in  the  midst  of  its  churches,  and  Sabbath 
schools,  and  manifold  reclaiming  societies. 

79 


80  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

The  author  of  the  following  work  has  been  much 
in  the  habit  of  comparing  the  habitudes  of  a  city  with 
those  of  a  country  population,  and  he  cannot  more 
fitly  express  its  subject  than  by  assigning  to  it  the 
title  of  "  The  Christian  and  Civic  Economy  of  Large 
Towns.  ." 


THE    CHRISTIAN   AND    CIVIC    ECON- 
OMY OF  LARGE   TOWNS 

VOLUME  I 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   ADVANTAGE    AND    POSSIBILITY  OF  ASSIMILATING 
A  TOWN  TO  A  COUNTRY  PARISH 

THERE  are  two  classes  of  writers  whose  prevailing  topics 
stand  intimately  connected  with  the  philosophy  of  human 
affairs,  but  who,  in  almost  all  their  habitudes  of  thinking, 
have  hitherto  maintained  an  unfortunate  distance  from 
each  other.  There  are  political  economists,  who  do  not 
admit  Christianity  as  an  element  into  their  speculations; 
and  there  are  Christian  philanthropists  who  do  not  admit 
political  science  as  an  element  into  theirs.  The  former 
very  generally  regard  the  professional  subject  of  the 
latter,  if  not  with  contempt,  at  least  with  unconcern ;  and 
the  latter  as  generally  regard  the  professional  subject 
of  the  former  with  a  somewhat  sensitive  kind  of  preju- 
dice, bordering  upon  disapprobation  and  dislike.  It  is 
thus  that  two  classes  of  public  laborers,  who,  with  a  mutual 
respect  and  understanding,  might  have,  out  of  their  united 
contributions,  rendered  a  most  important  offering  to  so- 
6  81 


82  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

ciety,  have,  in  fact,  each  in  the  prosecution  of  their  own 
separate  walk,  so  shut  out  the  light  and  so  rejected  the 
aid  which  the  other  could  have  afforded,  as  either,  in 
many  instances,  to  have  merely  amused  the  intellectual 
public  with  inert  and  unproductive  theory,  on  the  one 
hand,  or  as  to  have  misled  the  practically  benevolent 
public  into  measures  of  well-meaning  but  mischievous 
and  ill-directed  activity  on  the  other. 

And,  indeed,  it  is  only  in  the  later  wralks  of  political 
science  that  the  aid  of  Christianity  has  obviously  be- 
come of  practical  importance  to  her;  nor  did  this  aid 
appear  to  be  at  all  requisite  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
effect  to  her  earlier  speculations.  Till  within  these  last 
fifteen  years,  the  great  topic  of  inquiry  among  our  ab- 
stract politicians  was  the  theory  of  commerce,  and  the 
moral  habit  of  the  laboring  classes,  as  founded  on  their 
religion,  did  not  enter  as  an  element  or  as  a  component 
part  into  that  theory.  .  .  .  But  the  case  is  widely  dif- 
ferent with  respect  to  the  later  contributions  which  have 
been  rendered  to  this  science.  We  allude  more  especially 
to  the  essay  of  Mr.  Malthus,  whose  theory  of  population, 
had  it  been  present  to  the  mind  of  Mr.  Smith,  would, 
we  think,  have  modified  certain  of  those  doctrines  and 
conclusions  which  he  presented  to  the  world  in  his  essay 
on  the  "  Theory  of  Commerce."  It  is  true  that  govern- 
ment, by  her  obtrusive  interferences,  has  put  the  country 
into  a  worse  condition,  in  respect  of  her  population,  than 
it  would  have  been  in  had  this  branch  of  its  economy 
been  also  left  to  itself.  There  are  certain  artificial  en- 
couragements to  population  which  government  ought 


TOWN  AXD  COUNTRY   PARISHES  ASSIMILABLE       83 

never  to  have  sanctioned,  and  which  it  were  the  wisdom 
of  government,  with  all  prudent  and  practicable  speed, 
to  abolish.  There  are  certain  bounties  that  the  law  has 
devised  upon  marriage,  in  every  way  as  hurtful  and  im- 
politic as  her  bounties  upon  trade,  and  which  it  were 
greatly  better  for  the  interests  of  all  classes,  and  more1 
especially  of  the  laboring  classes,  that  she  should  forth- 
with recall.  There  is  a  way  in  which,  by  stepping  be- 
yond her  province  and  attempting  to  provide  for  that 
which  would  have  been  more  effectually  provided  for 
without  her,  by  the  strong  principle  of  self-preservation, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  free  but  powerful  sympathies 
of  individual  nature  on  the  other;  there  is  a  way  in 
which  she  has  lulled  the  poor  into  improvidence  and 
frozen  the  rich  into  apathy  toward  their  wants  and  their 
sufferings,  and  this  way  it  were  surely  better  that  she 
had  never  entered  upon,  and  better  now  that  she  should 
retrace  with  all  convenient  expedition.  Now  all  this  may 
be  done,  and  with  a  certain  degree  of  benefit,  even  in 
the  midst  of  an  unchristian  population.  Their  comfort 
would  be  advanced  so  far,  merely  by  the  principles  of 
nature  being  restored  to  their  unfettered  operation;  and 
this  is  desirable,  even  though  we  should  fall  short  of  that 
additional  comfort  which  would  accrue  from  the  prin- 
ciples of  Christianity  being  brought  more  prevalently 
among  them  than  before.  And  thus  it  is  a  possible 
thing  that  government,  acting  exclusively  in  this  tem- 
per and  with  the  views  of  the  wisdom  of  this  world,  may 
exert  itself  with  beneficial  influence  on  that  great  branch 
of  political  economy  which  relates  to  the  population  of 


84  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

a  state,  just  as  she  may  on  that  other  great  branch  of  it 
which  relates  to  the  commerce  of  a  state.     .     .     . 

But  there  is  one  wide  and  palpable  distinction  be- 
tween the  matter  of  commerce  and  the  matter  of  popu- 
lation. Government  may  safely  withdraw  from  the  for- 
mer concern  altogether,  and  abandon  it  to  the  love  of 
gain  and  the  spirit  of  enterprise,  and  the  sharp-sighted 
sagacity  that  guides  almost  all  the  pursuits  of  interest, 
and  the  natural  securities  for  justice  between  man  and 
man  in  society.  .  .  .  And  it  were  also  well,  that  govern- 
ment withdrew  from  the  concern  of  ordinary  pauperism 
altogether  which  stands  so  nearly  associated  with  the  ques- 
tion of  population.  She  would  in  this  way  do  much  to 
call  forth  a  resurrection  of  those  providential  habits 
which  serve  both  to  restrain  the  number  and  to  equalize 
the  comforts  of  our  people ;  and  she  would  also  do  much 
to  bring  out  those  otherwise  checked  and  superseded  sym- 
pathies that,  in  the  flow  of  their  kindly  and  spontaneous 
exercise,  are  more  fitted  to  bind  the  community  in  gen- 
tleness together  than  all  the  legalized  charities  of  our 
land.  But  though  she  may  do  thus  much,  she  cannot 
do  all,  and  there  will  still  be  left  a  mighty  reversion  of 
good  that  can  only  be  achieved  by  the  people  themselves. 
For,  though  the  unfettered  principles  of  nature  may  suf- 
fice for  carrying  all  that  interest  which  is  connected  with 
the  state  of  a  country's  commerce  onward  to  the  condi- 
tion that  is  best  and  safest  for  the  public  weal,  the  mere 
principles  of  nature  will  not  suffice  for  carrying  the  in- 
terest that  is  connected  with  the  state  of  a  country's  pop- 
ulation onward  to  the  condition  that  is  best  and  safest 


TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  PARISHES  ASSIMILABLE      85 

for  the  public  weal.  ...  So  long  as  profligacy  remains 
the  pressure  in  question  will,  though  lessened  in  amount, 
remain  along  with  it.  So  long  as  the  sensual  predomi- 
nates over  the  reflective  part  of  the  human  constitution 
will  there  be  improvident  marriages  and  premature  fami- 
lies, and  an  overdone  competition  for  subsistence,  and 
a  general  inadequacy  in  the  wages  of  labor  to  the  fair  rate 
of  human  enjoyment,  and,  in  a  word,  all  the  disorder 
and  discomfort  of  an  excessive  population.  So  long  as 
there  is  generally  a  low  and  grovelling  taste  among  the 
people,  instead  of  an  aspiring  tendency  toward  something 
more  in  the  way  of  comfort  and  cleanliness  and  elegance 
than  is  to  be  met  with  in  the  sordid  habitations  of  a 
rude  and  demi-barbarous  country,  will  they  rush  with  pre- 
cipitation into  matrimony  and  care  not  how  unable  they 
are  to  meet  its  expenses,  and  forfeit  the  whole  ease  and 
accommodation  of  the  future  to  the  present  ascendency 
of  a  blind  and  uncalculating  impulse.  .  .  .  The  ten- 
dency to  excessive  population  can  only  find  its  thorough 
and  decisive  counteraction  among  the  amended  habits, 
and  the  moralized  characters,  and  the  exalted  principles 
of  the  people  themselves.  .  .  .  It  is  necessary  to  go 
forth  among  the  people,  and  there  to  superinduce  the 
principles  of  an  efficient  morality  on  the  mere  principles 
of  nature,  and  there  to  work  a  transformation  of  tasto 
and  of  character,  and  there  to  deliver  lessons  which  of 
themselves  will  induce  a  habit  of  thoughtfulness  that 
must  insensibly  pervade  the  whole  system  of  a  man's  de- 
sires and  doings,  making  him  more  a  being  of  reach  and 
intellect  and  anticipation  than  he  was  formerly — raising 


86  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  whole  tone  of  his  mind  and  infusing  into  every  prac- 
tical movement,  along  with  the  elements  of  passion  and 
interest,  the  elements  of  duty  and  of  wisdom  and  of  self- 
estimation. 

It  is  thus  that  the  disciples  of  political  science,  however 
wisely  they  may  speculate  upon  this  question,  are,  if  with- 
out the  element  of  character  among  the  general  popula- 
tion, in  a  state  of  impotency  as  to  the  practical  effect 
of  their  speculation.  So  long  as  the  people  remain  either 
depraved  or  unenlightened,  the  country  will  never  attain 
a  healthful  condition  in  respect  of  one  of  the  great 
branches  of  her  policy.  This  is  an  obstacle  which  stands 
uncontrollably  opposed  to  the  power  of  every  other  ex- 
pedient for  the  purpose  of  mitigating  the  evils  of  a  re- 
dundant population ;  and,  till  this  be  removed,  legislators 
may  devise  and  economists  may  demonstrate  as  they  will, 
they  want  one  of  the  data  indispensable  to  the  right 
solution  of  a  problem  which,  however  clear  in  theory, 
will,  upon  trial,  mock  the  vain  endeavors  of  those  who 
overlook  the  moral  principles  of  man,  or  despise  the  mys- 
teries of  that  faith  which  can  alone  inspire  them. 

It  is  thus  that  our  political  writers,  if  at  all  honestly 
desirous  of  obtaining  a  fulfilment  for  their  own  specula- 
tion, should  look  toward  the  men  who  are  fitted  to  ex- 
patiate among  the  people  in  the  capacity  of  their  most 
acceptable  and  efficient  moralists.  It  is  evident  that  they 
themselves  are  not  the  best  adapted  for  such  a  practical 
movement  through  a  community  of  human  beings.  It 
is  not  by  any  topic  or  any  demonstration  of  theirs  that 
we  can  at  all  look  for  a  general  welcome  and  admittance 


TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  PARISHES  ASSIMILABLE       87 

among  families.  Let  one  of  their  number,  for  example, 
go  forth  with  the  argument  of  Maltlms,  or  any  other  of 
the  lessons  of  political  economy,  and  that  for  the  purpose 
of  enlightening  the  practice  and  observation  of  his  neigh- 
borhood. The  very  first  reception  that  he  met  with  would, 
in  all  likelihood,  check  the  farther  progress  of  this  moral 
and  benevolent  adventure,  and  stamp  upon  it  all  the  folly 
and  all  the  fruitlessness  of  Quixotism.  People  would 
laugh,  or  wonder,  or  be  offended,  and  a  sense  of  the  ut- 
terly ridiculous  would  soon  attach  itself  to  this  expedi- 
tion and  lead  him  to  abandon  it.  Now,  herein  lies  the 
great  initial  superiority  which  the  merely  Christian  has 
over  the  merely  civil  philanthropist.  He  is  armed  with 
a  topic  of  ready  and  pertinent  introduction  with  which 
he  may  go  round  a  population  and  come  into  close  and 
extensive  contact  with  all  the  families.  Let  his  errand 
be  connected  with  religion,  and,  even  though  a  very  ob- 
scure and  wholly  unsanctioned  individual,  may  he  enter 
within  the  precincts  of  nearly  every  household  and  not 
meet  with  one  act  of  rudeness  or  resistance  during  the 
whole  of  his  progress.  Should  he  only,  for  example,  in- 
vite their  young  to  his  Sabbath  school,  he,  with  this  for 
his  professed  object,  would  find  himself  in  possession  of 
a  passport  upon  which,  and  more  especially  among  the 
common  ranks  of  society,  he  might  step  into  almost  every 
dwelling-place  and  engage  the  inmates  in  conversations 
of  piety,  and  leave  at  least  the  sensations  of  cordiality 
and  gratitude  behind  him,  and  pave  the  way  for  succes- 
sive applications  of  the  same  influence,  and  secure  this 
acknowledgment  in  favor  of  his  subject,  that  it  is  worthy 


88  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

of  being  proposed  on  one  side,  and  worthy  of  being  enter- 
tained and  patiently  listened  to  on  the  other.  It  is  not 
of  his  final  success  that  we  are  now  speaking.  It  is  of 
his  advantageous  outset.  .  .  . 

It  would  save  a  world  of  misconception  were  it  kept 
distinctly  in  mind  that,  for  the  purpose  of  giving  effect 
to  the  lessons  of  the  economist,  it  is  not  necessary  for 
him  who  labors  in  the  gospel  vineyard,  either  to  teach 
or  even  so  much  as  to  understand  these  lessons.  Let  him 
simply  confine  himself  to  his  own  strict  and  peculiar  busi- 
ness; let  him  labor  for  immortality  alone;  let  his  single 
aim  be  to  convert  and  to  christianize,  and,  as  the  result 
of  prayer  and  exertion,  to  succeed  in  depositing  with 
some  the  faith  of  the  New  Testament,  so  as  that  they 
shall  hold  forth  to  the  esteem  and  the  imitation  of  many 
the  virtues  of  the  New  Testament,  and  he  does  more 
for  the  civil  and  economical  well-being  of  his  neighbor- 
hood than  he  ever  could  do  by  the  influence  of  all  secular 
demonstration.  ...  It  were  worse  than  ridiculous,  and 
it  most  assuredly  is  not  requisite  for  him,  to  become  the 
champion  of  any  economic  theory  with  the  principle  of 
which  he  should  be  constantly  infusing  either  his  pulpit 
or  his  parochial  ministrations.  His  office  may  be  upheld 
in  the  entire  aspect  of  its  sacredness,  and  the  main  desire 
and  prayer  of  his  heart  toward  God  in  behalf  of  his  breth- 
ren may  be  that  they  should  be  saved,  and  the  engrossment 
of  his  mind  with  the  one  thing  needful  may  be  as  com- 
plete as  was  that  of  the  apostle  who  determined  to  know 
nothing  among  his  hearers  save  Jesus  Christ  and  Him 
crucified;  and  yet,  such  is  the  fulness  of  the  blessing  of 


TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  PARISHES  ASSIMILABLE       89 

the  gospel  with  which  lie  is  fraught,  that  while  he  ren- 
ders the  best  possible  service  to  the  converts  whom,  un- 
der the  Spirit  of  God,  he  has  gained  to  its  cause,  he  also, 
in  the  person  of  those  converts,  renders  the  best  possible 
contribution  to  the  temporal  good  of  society.  It  is 
enough  that  they  have  been  rescued  from  the  dominion 
of  sensuality;  it  is  enough  that  they  have  become  disci- 
ples of  that  book  which,  while  it  teaches  them  to  be  fer- 
vent in  spirit,  teaches  them  also  to  be  not  slothful  in 
business;  it  is  enough  that  the  Christian  faith  has  been 
formed  with  such  power  in  their  hearts  as  to  bring  out 
the  Christian  morals  into  visible  exemplification  upon 
their  history;  it  is  enough  that  the  principle  within  them, 
if  it  do  not  propagate  its  own  likeness  in  others,  can  at 
least,  like  the  salt  to  which  they  have  been  compared, 
season  a  whole  vicinity  with  many  of  its  kindred  and 
secondary  attributes.  There  is  not  a  more  familiar  ex- 
hibition in  humble  life  than  that  alliance,  in  virtue  of 
which  a  Christian  family  is  almost  sure  to  be  a  well-con- 
ditioned family.  And  yet  its  members  are  utterly  un- 
versant  either  in  the  maxims  or  in  the  speculations  of 
political  science.  They  occupy  the  right  place  in  a  rightly 
constituted  and  well-going  mechanism ;  but  the  mechan- 
ism itself  is  what  they  never  hear  of  and  could  not  com- 
prehend. Their  Christian  adviser  never  reads  them  a 
lesson  from  the  writings  of  any  economist,  and  yet  the 
moral  habit  to  which  the  former  has  been  the  instrument 
of  conducting  them  is  that  which  brings  them  into  a  state 
of  practical  conformity  with  the  soundest  and  most  valu- 
able lessons  which  the  latter  can  devise.  .  . 


90  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

If  we  revert  to  the  habit  of  the  last  generation  in 
Scotland,  which  is  still  fresh  in  the  remembrance  of  many 
who  are  now  alive,  we  shall  find  an  ample  verification  of 
all  these  remarks.  At  that  time  Malthus  had  not  written, 
and  his  speculations  had  little  more  than  an  embryo  ex- 
istence in  the  pages  of  Wallace;  and  certain  it  is  that 
in  the  minds  of  our  solid,  regular,  and  well-doing  peas- 
antry it  had  no  existence  at  all.  It  was  acted  upon,  but 
without  being  at  all  counted  upon.  It  was  one  of  the 
cherished  and  domestic  decencies  of  a  former  age  trans- 
mitted from  every  matron  to  her  daughters — not  to  marry 
without  a  costly  and  creditable  provision;  and  the  delay 
of  years  was  often  incurred  in  the  mighty  work  of  piling 
together  the  whole  materiel  of  a  most  bulky  and  laborious 
preparation,  and  the  elements  of  future  comfort  and 
future  respectability  behooved  to  be  accumulated  to  a 
very  large  extent  ere  it  was  lawful,  or  at  least  reputable, 
to  enter  upon  the  condition  of  matrimony.  And  thus 
the  moral  preventive  check  of  our  great  economist  was 
in  full  and  wholesome  operation  long  before  it  was  of- 
fered by  him  to  public  notice  in  the  shape  of  a  distinct 
and  salutary  principle.  .  .  .  Not  till  we  recall  the, 
Christianity  shall  we  ever  recall  the  considerate  sobriety, 
the  steady,  equalized  comfort,  the  virtuous  independence 
of  a  generation,  the  habit  and  the  memory  of  which  are 
so  fast  departing  away  from  us.  ... 

So  much  for  the  prevailing  tendency  of  the  civil  to 
underrate  or  disregard  the  labors  of  the  Christian  philan- 
thropist. But  there  is  no  less  prevailing  a  tendency,  on 
the  part  of  the  latter,  to  neglect  many  of  the  principles 


TOWN   AND  COUNTRY  PARISHES   ASSIMILABLE       91 

and  to  underrate  many  of  the  propositions  of  the  former. 
It  is  certainly  to  be  regretted  that  many  of  our  most 
pious  and  even  our  most  profound  theologians  should 
be  so  unfurnished  as  they  are  with  the  conceptions  of 
political  economy.  But  it  is  their  active  resistance  to 
some  of  its  clearest  and  most  unquestionable  principles, 
it  is  their  blindly  sentimental  dislike  of  a  doctrine  which 
stands  on  the  firm  basis  of  arithmetic,  it  is  their  misrepre- 
sentation of  it  as  hostile  to  the  exercise  of  our  best  feel- 
ing, when,  in  fact,  all  its  hostility  is  directed  against  such 
perverse  and  unfortunate  arrangements  as  have  served 
to  chill  and  to  counteract  the  sympathies  of  our  nature; 
it  is  the  dogmatism  of  their  strenuous  asseverations  against 
that  which  experience  and  demonstration  are  ever  ob- 
truding upon  the  judgment  as  irrefragable  truth;  it  is 
this  which  is  mainly  to  be  regretted,  for  it  has  enlisted 
the  whole  of  their  high  and  deserved  influence  on  the 
side  of  institutions  pernicious  to  society;  and  what,  per- 
haps, is  still  worse,  it  has  led  a  very  enlightened  class 
in  our  land  to  imagine  a  certain  poverty  of  understand- 
ing as  inseparable  from  religious  zeal,  thus  bringing  down 
our  Christian  laborers  from  that  estimation  which,  on 
their  own  topic,  so  rightfully  belongs  to  them,  and  de- 
ducting from  the  weight  of'  that  professional  testimony 
which  it  were  the  best  interest  of  all  classes  most  pa- 
tiently to  listen  to  and  most  respectfully  to  entertain. 

But  the  mischief  which  has  thus  been  inflicted  on  the 
good  of  humanity  is  not  to  be  compared  with  the  still 
deadlier  mischief  of  a  certain  error  which  has  received 
the  utmost  countenance  and  support  from  a  large  class 


92  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

of  religionists.  What  we  allude  to  is  their  distaste  to- 
ward all  kinds  of  external  machinery  for  the  furtherance 
of  any  Christian  enterprise,  founded  on  their  misapplica- 
tion of  an  undoubted  doctrine,  that  all  the  ebbs  and  all 
the  revivals  of  Christianity  are  primarily  to  be  traced 
to  the  alternations  of  a  direct  influence  from  heaven. 
They  look,  and  they  rightly  look,  to  the  Spirit  of  God 
as  the  agent  of  every  prosperous  revolution  in  the  Chris- 
tianity of  our  land.  ...  It  were  folly  to  think  that 
by  the  mere  erection  of  a  material  framework  the  cause 
of  Christianity  can  be  advanced  by  a  single  hair-breadth, 
should  there  be  a  withholding  of  that  special  and  sanctify- 
ing grace.  .  .  .  And  hence  with  many  there  is  a  total 
indolence  and  unconcern  as  to  all  outward  arguments, 
and  everything  like  a  visible  apparatus  appears  insignifi- 
cant in  their  eyes:  and  with  something  like  the  compla- 
cency of  one  who  fancies  himself  in  possession  of  the 
recondite  principle  of  a  given  operation  do  they  view 
with  contempt  all  that  man  can  do  externally  and  with 
his  hands  for  the  purpose  of  achieving  it.  And  thus  do 
they  hold  in  a  kind  of  ineffable  disdain  the  proposal  of 
building  more  churches  for  the  increase  of  Christianity 
in  our  land.  And  this  is  only  one  out  of  many  instances 
in  which,  under  a  sense  of  the  utter  impotency  of  all 
mechanism,  they  would  restrain  human  activity  from 
putting  itself  forth  on  any  palpable  subject,  and  would 
sit  in  a  sort  of  mystic  and  expectant  quietism  till  there 
come  down  upon  us  from  the  skies  the  visitation  of  that 
inspiring  energy  which  is  to  provide  for  all  and  to  do 
all. 


TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  PARISHES  ASSIMILABLE       93 

[Examples  of  the  use  of  means  in  all  ages  of  the 
Church  are  given,  from  Apostolic  times  down  to  the 
schools  of  Scotland.] 

In  this  we  see  the  good  of  what  may  be  called  a  mate- 
rial organization.  It  survives  all  the  ebbs  and  alterna- 
tions of  the  spirit  which  gave  it  birth,  and  who  can  fail 
to  perceive  that,  in  virtue  of  its  existence,  when  this 
spirit  reappears  in  the  country,  it  finds  channels  for  a 
readier  and  more  abundant  access  into  all  the  families 
than  it  would  do  in  a  country  where  there  was  no  paro- 
chial endowment  and  no  regular  or  universal  habit  of 
scholarship  among  the  population  ?  .  .  . 

We  hold  the  possibility,  and  we  cannot  doubt  the 
advantage  of  assimilating  a  town  to  a  country  parish.  We 
think  that  the  same  moral  regimen  which,  under  the 
parochial  and  ecclesiastical  system  of  Scotland,  has  been 
set  up,  and  with  so  much  effect,  in  her  country  parishes, 
may,  by  a  few  simple  and  attainable  processes,  be  intro- 
duced into  the  most  crowded  of  our  cities,  and  with  as 
signal  and  conspicuous  an  effect  on  the  whole  habit  and 
character  of  their  population.  ...  So  that,  while 
the  profligacy  which  obtains  in  every  crowded  and  con- 
centrated mass  of  human  beings  is  looked  upon  by  many 
a  philanthropist  as  one  of  those  helpless  and  irreclaimable 
distempers  of  the  body  politic  for  which  there  is  no  rem- 
edy, do  we  maintain  that  there  are  certain  practicable 
arrangements  which,  under  the  blessing  of  God,  will  stay 
this  growing  calamity,  and  would,  by  the  perseverance 
of  a  few  years,  land  us  in  a  purer  and  better  generation. 
One  most  essential  step  toward  so  desirable  an  assimi- 


94  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

lation  in  a  large  city  parish  is  a  numerous  and  well-ap- 
pointed agency.  The  assimilation  here  does  not  lie  in 
the  external  framework;  for,  in  a  small  country  parish 
the  minister  alone,  or  with  a  very  few  coadjutors  of 
a  small  session,  may  bring  the  personal  influence  of  his 
kind  and  Christian  attentions  to  bear  upon  all  the  fami- 
lies. Among  the  ten  thousand  of  the  city  parish  this  is 
impossible;  and  therefore,  what  he  cannot  do  but  par- 
tially and  superficially  in  his  own  person  must,  if  done 
substantially,  be  done  in  the  person  of  others.  And  he, 
by  dividing  his  parish  into  small  manageable  districts, 
and  assigning  one  or  more  of  his  friends,  in  some  capacity 
or  other,  to  each  of  them,  and  vesting  them  with  such  a 
right  either  of  superintendence  or  of  inquiry  as  will 
always  be  found  to  be  gratefully  met  by  the  population, 
and  so  raising  a  ready  intermedium  of  communication 
between  himself  and  the  inhabitants  of  his  parish,  may 
at  length  attain  an  assimilation  in  point  of  result  to  a 
country  parish,  though  not  in  the  means  by  which  he 
arrived  at  it.  ...  Out  of  the  simple  elements  of 
attention  and  advice  and  civility  and  good-will  conveyed 
through  the  tenements  of  the  poor  by  men  a  little  more 
elevated  in  rank  than  themselves,  a  far  more  purifying 
and  even  more  gracious  operation  can  be  made  to  de: 
scend  upon  them  than  ever  will  be  achieved  by  any  other 
of  the  ministrations  of  charity.  .  .  . 

In  a  manufacturing  town  .  .  .  the  poor  and  the 
wealthy  stand  more  disjoined  from  each  other.  It  is  true 
they  often  meet,  but  they  meet  more  on  the  arena  of 
contest  than  on  a  field  where  the  patronage  and  custom 


TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  PARISHES  ASSIMILABLE       95 

of  the  one  party  are  met  by  the  gratitude  and  good-will 
of  the  other.  .  .  .  We  do  not  aim  at  the  most  distant 
reflection  against  the  manufacturers  of  our  land;  but 
it  must  be  quite  obvious,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  that 
their  intercourse  with  the  laboring  classes  -is  greatly  more 
an  intercourse  of  collision,  and  greatly  less  an  intercourse 
of  kindliness,  than  is  that  of  the  higher  orders  in  such 
towns  as  Bath,  or  Oxford,  or  Edinburgh.  In  this  way 
there  is  a  mighty  unfilled  space  interposed  between  the 
high  and  low  of  every  large  manufacturing  city,  in  con- 
sequence of  which  they  are  mutually  blind  to  the  real 
cordialities  and  attractions  which  belong  to  each  of  them, 
and  a  resentful  feeling  is  apt  to  be  fostered,  either  of  dis- 
dain or  defiance,  which  it  will  require  all  the  expedients 
of  an  enlightened  charity  effectually  to  do  away.  Nor 
can  we  guess  at  a  likelier  or  a  more  immediate  arrange- 
ment for  this  purpose  than  to  multiply  the  agents  of 
Christianity  among  us,  whose  delight  it  may  be  to  go 
forth  among  the  people  on  no  other  errand  than  that  of 
pure  good-will,  and  with  no  other  ministrations  than 
those  of  respect  and  tenderness. 

There  is  one  lesson  that  we  need  not  teach,  for  expe- 
rience has  already  taught  it,  and  that  is,  the  kindly  influ- 
ence which  the  mere  presence  of  a  human  being  has  upon 
his  fellows.  Let  the  attention  bestowed  upon  another  be 
the  genuine  emanation  of  good-will,  and  there  is  only  one 
thing  more  to  make  it  irresistible.  The  readiest  way  of 
finding  access  to  a  man's  heart  is  to  go  into  his  house  and 
there  to  perform  the  deed  of  kindness,  or  to  acquit  our- 
selves of  the  wonted  and  the  looked-for  acknowledgment. 


96  CHEISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

By  putting  ourselves  under  the  roof  of  a  poor  neighbor 
we  in  a  manner  put  ourselves  under  his  protection;  we 
render  him  for  a  time  our  superior;  we  throw  our  recep- 
tion on  his  generosity,  and  we  may  be  assured  that  it  is  a 
confidence  which  will  almost  never  fail  us.  ...  This 
is  the  home-walk  in  which  is  earned,  if  not  a  proud,  at 
least  a  peaceful,  popularity — the  popularity  of  the  heart, 
the  greetings  of  men  who,  touched  even  by  the  cheapest 
and  easiest  services  of  kindness,  have  nothing  to  give  out 
but  their  wishes  of  kindness  back  again;  but,  in  giving 
these,  have  crowned  such  pious  attentions  with  the  only 
popularity  that  is  worth  aspiring  after — the  popularity 
that  is  won  in  the  bosom  of  families  and  at  the  side  of 
death-beds. 

[The  author  protests  against  the  custom  of  civil  au- 
thorities of  that  day  in  Scotland  who  crowded  upon  city 
pastors  a  great  many  distracting  clerical  duties  which  nat- 
urally belonged  to  secular  offices  of  government.  He 
urges  that  this  custom  interfered  with  the  efficient  per- 
formance of  parish  duties;  that  it  exhausted  the  pastor 
with  a  round  of  petty  tasks;  that  it  interfered  with  that 
scholarly  leisure  which  is  necessary  for  the  development 
of  a  strong  theological  literature.] 

In  the  country  there  is  time  for  the  prosecution  of  a 
lofty  and  laborious  walk ;  but  there  is  not  the  excitement. 
In  the  town  there  is  the  excitement;  but,  under  the  prog- 
ress of  such  a  system  as  we  have  attempted  to  expose, 
there  will  not  be  the  time.  There  is  a  constant  with- 
drawment  of  the  more  conspicuous  members  of  our  es- 
tablishment from  the  solitude  of  their  first  parishes;  but 


TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  PARISHES  ASSIMILABLE       97 

it  is  withdrawment  into  a  vortex  which  stifles  and  de- 
stroys them.  Those  towns  which,  with  a  few  most  simple 
and  practicable  reformations,  might  be  the  instruments 
of  sustaining  the  cause  of  theology  and  of  sending  abroad 
over  the  face  of  our  country  a  most  vigorous  and  healthful 
impulse  toward  the  prosecution  of  theological  learning, 
may,  under  that  yearly  process  of  distinction  which  is 
now  going  forward,  depress  the  whole  literature  of  our 
profession.  .  .  .  And  we  have  only  to  look  to  the 
last  fifty  years  and  think  of  the  new  direction  to  our 
habits  which  has  taken  place  in  that  period,  in  order  to 
compute  how  soon  our  national  establishment  may,  by 
the  simple  cause  of  its  ministers  being  turned  to  the 
drudgery  of  other  services,  be  shorn  of  her  best  and  most 
substantial  glories,  and  how  soon  that  theology  of  which 
she  is  the  appointed  guardian  may  come  to  sink  both  in 
vigor  and  illustration  beneath  the  spirit  and  literature 
and  general  philosophy  of  the  times. 

Should  any  reader  think  that  we  have  drawn  the  above 
picture  with  too  faithful,  or  even  with  too  strong,  a  hand, 
we  ask  him,  further,  to  think  that  it  is  such  a  picture  as, 
by  its  very  exhibition,  may  scare  away  the  realities  which 
it  anticipates.  The  case,  we  are  persuaded,  requires  only 
to  be  understood,  and  then  it  will  be  provided  for,  since 
the  restoration  of  the  clergy  to  their  own  proper  and 
peculiar  influence  over  the  hosts  of  a  city  population  must 
appear  both  to  the  Christian  and  the  general  philanthro- 
pist one  of  the  most  important  of  our  national  desiderata. 


CHAPTER   II 

ON  THE  INFLUENCE   OF  LOCALITY  IN  TOWNS 

WE  do  not  know  how  the  matter  is  ordered  in  London ; 
but  in  the  second-rate  towns  of  our  empire  it  will  often 
be  found  that  when  a  philanthropic  society  is  formed 
in  them  for  any  assigned  object,  it  spreads  its  operations 
over  the  whole  field  of  the  congregated  population.  This 
holds  generally  true  both  of  the  societies  for  relief  and 
of  the  societies  for  instruction.  Take  a  clothing  society, 
or  an  old  man's  friend  society,  or  a  destitute  sick  society, 
as  examples  of  the  former;  or  take  a  Sabbath-school 
society  as  an  example  of  the  latter;  and  in  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  instances  will  it  be  seen  that  instead 
of  concentrating  their  exertions  upon  one  district  or  de- 
partment of  the  city,  they  expatiate  at  large  and  over 
the  face  of  its  entire  territory,  recognizing  no  other  boun- 
dary than  that  which  lies  indefinitely  but  fully  beyond 
the  final  outskirts  of  the  compact  and  contiguous  dwell- 
ing-places. .  .  . 

[Usually  a  Sabbath-school  draws  its  teachers  from  all 
parts  of  the  city  and  children  from  many  localities.  The 
better  way  would  be  to  assign  a  small  and  definite  area 
to  a  teacher  and  make  him  feel  responsible  for  all  the 
persons  within  this  limited  district.  The  advantage  and 
charm  of  this  intensive  and  thorough  method  can  be  real- 
ized only  by  those  who  have  given  it  an  adequate  trial.] 


INFLUENCE    OF    LOCALITY  99 

The  first  effect  of  it  which  falls  to  be  considered  is 
that  which  it  has  upon  the  teacher.  .  .  .  He,  with  a 
select  and  appropriate  vineyard  thus  lying  before  him, 
will  feel  himself  more  powerfully  urged  than  when  un- 
der the  common  arrangement,  to  go  forth  among  its  fami- 
lies. .  .  .  When  the  subject  on  which  he  is  to  operate 
thus  offers  itself  to  his  contemplation  in  the  shape  of  one 
unbroken  field  or  of  one  entire  and  continuous  body,  it 
acts  as  a  more  distinct  and  imperative  call  upon  him  to 
go  out  upon  the  enterprise.  He  will  feel  a  kind  of  prop- 
erty in  the  families ;  and  the  very  circumstance  of  a  mate- 
rial limit  around  their  habitations  serves  to  strengthen 
this  impression  by  furnishing  to  his  mind  a  sort  of  asso- 
ciation with  the  hedges  and  the  landmarks  of  property. 
.  .  .  There  is  a  very  great  difference  in  respect  of  its 
practical  influence,  between  a  task  that  is  indefinite  and 
a  task  that  is  clearly  seen  to  be  overtakable.  The  one  has 
the  effect  to  paralyze,  the  other  to  quicken,  exertion.  .  .  . 
It  serves  most  essentially  to  spirit  on  his  undertaking 
when,  by  every  new  movement,  one  feels  himself  to  be 
drawing  sensibly  nearer  to  the  accomplishment  of  it.  ... 
He  can  go  over  his  families,  too,  with  far  less  expense 
of  locomotion  than  under  the  common  system  of  Sab- 
bath-schools, and,  for  the  same  reason,  can  he  more  fully 
and  frequently  reiterate  his  attentions,  and  it  will  charm 
him  onward  to  find  that  he  is  sensibly  translating  himself 
into  a  stricter  and  kinder  relationship  with  the  people 
of  his  district;  and,  if  he  have  a  taste  for  cordial  inter- 
course with  the  fellows  of  his  own  nature,  he  will  be 
gladdened  and  encouraged  by  this  growing  familiarity 


100  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

with  them  all,  and  thus  will  he  turn  the  vicinity  which 
he  has  chosen  into  a  home-walk  of  many  charities;  and, 
recognized  as  its  moral  benefactor,  will  his  kindness  and 
his  judgment  and  his  Christianity  be  put  forth,  with  a 
well-earned  and  well-established  influence,  in  behalf  of 
a  grateful  population.  .  .  . 

The  next  is  its  effect  in  calling  out  the  attendance 
of  the  taught.  The  invitation  comes  upon  them  with 
far  greater  power  when  it  is  to  attend  the  weekly  lessons 
which  are  given  out  in  the  close  vicinity  of  their  own 
habitations  than  were  it  to  attend  at  some  distant  place 
where  children  are  assembled  from  all  quarters  of  the  city. 
.  .  .  There  is  also  much  in  the  juxtaposition  of  the 
taught  to  one  another.  This  brings  what  may  be  called 
the  gregarious  principle  into  fuller  play.  What  children 
will  not  do  singly  they  will  do  with  delight  and  readiness 
in  a  flock.  .  .  . 

The  third  peculiar  benefit  of  this  local  arrangement 
is  its  effect  on  the  population  of  the  district.  .  .  .  One 
great  desideratum  in  large  towns  is  acquaintanceship 
among  the  contiguous  families.  And  to  promote  this 
every  arrangement,  in  itself  right,  should  be  promoted 
which  brings  out  the  indwellers  of  one  vicinity  to  one 
common  place  of  repair,  and  brings  upon  them  one  com- 
mon ministration.  .  . 

[The  ordinary  system  lacks  these  advantages.] 

Under  a  local  system  the  teachers  move  toward  the 
people.  Under  a  general  system  such  of  the  people  as 
are  disposed  to  Christianity  move  toward  them.  To  esti- 


INFLUENCE    OF    LOCALITY  101 

mate  the  comparative  effect  of  these  two,  take  the  actual 
state  of  every  mixed  and  crowded  population,  where  there 
must  be  many  among  whom  this  disposition  is  utterly 
extinguished.  The  question  is,  How  shall  the  influence 
of  a  Sabbath-school  be  brought  most  readily  and  most 
abundantly  into  contact  with  their  families?  "Which  of 
the  two  parties,  the  teacher,  or  those  to  be  taught,  should 
make  the  first  advances  to  such  an  approximation?  To 
meet  this  question,  let  it  ever  be  remembered  that  there 
is  a  wide  and  mighty  difference  between  the  wants  of  our 
physical  and  those  of  our  moral  and  spiritual  nature.  In 
proportion  to  our  want  of  food  is  our  desire  for  food; 
but  it  is  not  so  with  our  want  of  knowledge,  or  virtue,  or 
religion.  The  more  destitute  we  are  of  these  last,  the 
more  dead  we  are  to  any  inclination  for  them.  A  gen- 
eral system  of  Sabbath-schooling  may  attract  toward  it 
all  the  predisposition  that  there  is  for  Christian  instruc- 
tion, and  yet  leave  the  majority  as  untouched  and  as  un- 
awakened  as  it  found  them.  ...  It  is  both  a  possible 
thing  that  schools  may  multiply  under  a  general  system 
and  that  out  of  the  resources  of  a  mighty  population  an 
overflowing  attendance  may  be  afforded  to  each  of  them, 
while  an  humble  fraction  of  the  whole  is  all  that  is  over- 
taken; and  below  the  goodly  superficies  of  a  great  ap- 
parent stir  and  activity  may  an  unseen  structure  of  baser 
materials  deepen  and  accumulate  underneath,  so  as  to 
furnish  a  solution  of  the  fact  that  with  an  increase  of 
Christian  exertion  among  us  there  should,  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  be  an  increase  of  heathenism.  .  .  . 

The  schools,  under  a  general  system,  are  so  many  cen- 


102  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

tres  of  attraction  for  all  the  existing  desire  that  there  is 
toward  Christianity;  .  .  .  the  schools  under  a  local 
system  are  so  many  centres  of  emanation  from  which 
a  vivifying  influence  is  actively  propagated  through  a 
dead  and  putrid  mass.  .  .  .  The  general  system  draws 
around  it  the  young  of  our  more  decent  and  reputable 
families.  .  .  .  It  is  the  pride  of  the  latter  or  local 
system,  while  it  refuses  not  these,  that  it  also  fetches  out 
from  their  obscurities  the  very  poorest  and  most  profligate 
of  children.  It  may  have  a  painful  encounter  at  the  out- 
set with  the  filth,  and  the  raggedness,  and  the  other  rude 
and  revolting  materials  which  it  has  so  laboriously  exca- 
vated from  those  mines  of  depravity  that  lie  beneath  the 
surface  of  common  observation.  But  it  may  well  be 
consoled  with  the  thought  that  while  much  good  has 
been  done  by  its  predecessor  which,  we  trust,  it  is  on  the 
eve  of  supplanting,  it  holds  in  its  own  hands  the  materials 
of  a  far  more  glorious  transformation. 

[Crime  and  disorder  may  be  increasing  side  by  side  with 
the  striking  advance  of  the  Church  and  of  culture.  The 
methods  of  attraction  display  victories  in  one  quarter, 
while,  in  the  absence  of  methods  of  emanation  and  per- 
vasion, the  lower  quarters  are  sinking  into  deeper  de- 
pravity.] 

In  these  circumstances  do  we  know  of  no  expedient 
by  which  this  woful  degeneracy  can  be  arrested  and 
recalled,  but  an  actual  search  and  entry  upon  the  terri- 
tory of  wickedness.  A  mere  signal  of  invitation  is  not 
enough.  .  .  .  We  must  do  with  the  near  what  we 


INFLUENCE    OF    LOCALITY  103 

are  doing  with  the  distant  world.  We  do  not  expect  to 
Christianize  the  latter  by  messages  of  entreaty  from  the 
regions  of  paganism.  But  we  send  our  messages  to  them. 
Neither  do  we  give  a  roving  commission  to  the  bearer, 
but  assign  to  each  of  them  their  respective  stations  in 
that  field,  which  is  the  world.  .  .  .  There  must  just 
be  as  aggressive  a  movement  in  the  one  case  as  in  the 
other.  There  is  not  the  same  physical  distance,  but  there 
is  nearly  the  same  moral  distance,  to  be  described  with 
both.  .  .  . 

Any  one,  or,  at  most,  two  philanthropists,  may  set 
forth  upon  such  an  experiment.  They  will  soon,  in  the 
course  of  their  inquiries,  be  enabled  to  verify  the  actual 
state  of  our  city  families,  and,  at  the  same  time,  their 
openness  to  the  influence  of  a  pervading  operation.  Let 
them,  for  this  purpose,  make  their  actual  entrance  upon  a 
district  which  they  have  previously  chalked  out  as  the 
ground  of  their  benevolent  enterprise ;  and  it  were  better 
that  it  should  be  in  some  poor  and  neglected  part  of  the 
city.  Let  the  one  introduce  the  other  to  every  family, 
and  on  the  simple  errand  that  he  meant  to  set  up  a  Sab- 
bath-school, to  be  just  at  hand,  and  for  the  vicinity  around 
him.  With  no  other  manner  than  that  which  Christian 
kindness  would  dictate,  and  just  such  questions  as  are 
consistent  with  the  respect  which  every  human  being 
should  entertain  for  another,  we  promise  him  not  merely 
a  civil,  but  a  cordial  reception  in  almost  every  house, 
and  a  discreet  answer  to  all  his  inquiries.  The  first  thing 
which,  in  all  likelihood,  will  meet  his  observation,  is  the 
mighty  remainder  of  good  that  is  left  for  him  to  do 


104  CHKISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

amid  the  number  and  exertion  of  the  general  Sabbath- 
schools  that  are  on  every  side  of  him.  It  may  be  other- 
wise in  some  few  accidental  districts;  but,  speaking 
generally,  he  will  assemble  a  sufficient  school  out  of  a 
population  of  three  hundred.  Parents  of  all  characters 
will  accept  his  proposition  with  gratitude.  And  if,  on  his 
first  meeting  with  their  children  in  some  apartment  of  the 
district,  he  should  be  disappointed  by  the  non-attendance 
of  some  he  was  counting  on,  a  few  calls  of  inquiry  on 
the  subject  will  generally  at  length  secure  the  point  of 
their  attendance;  and,  by  following  up  every  case  of 
absence  with  a  week-day  inquiry  of  the  parents,  he  will 
secure  the  regularity  of  it,  and  thus  may  he  bring  his 
moral  and  personal  influence  into  contact  with  their 
young  for  a  few  hours  of  every  recurring  Sabbath,  and 
also  keep  up  an  influence  through  the  whole  week  by 
the  circulation  of  books  from  a  small  library  attached 
to  his  institution.  It  will  prove  a  mighty  accession  to 
the  good  that  he  is  doing  if  he  hold  frequent  intercourse 
with  the  families.  .  .  . 

A  few  months  of  perseverance  will  thoroughly  engage 
him  to  the  cause  he  has  undertaken.  He  will  feel  a  com- 
fort in  this  style  of  philanthropy  which  he  does  not  feel 
in  the  bustle  and  distraction  of  manifold  societies.  He 
will  enjoy  both  the  unity  and  the  effectiveness  of  his 
doings.  And  instead  of  pacing,  as  he  does  now,  among 
dull  committees,  and  perplexing  himself  among  the  ques- 
tions of  a  large  and  laborious  superintendence,  will  he 
expatiate,  without  encumbrance,  upon  his  own  chosen 
field,  and  rejoice  in  putting  forth  his  immediate  hand 


INFLUENCE    OF    LOCALITY  105 

on  the  work  of  reclaiming  it  from  that  neglected  waste 
of  ignorance  and  improvidence  by  which  it  is  surrounded. 
To  be  effective  in  such  a  walk  of  benevolence  as  this 
it  is  not  necessary  to  be  rich. 

[The  visitor  might  build  up  a  school,  in  the  absence 
of  free  public  schools,  by  soliciting  small  contributions 
for  a  teacher.  He  might  train  the  people  to  thrift  by 
collecting  their  pennies  and  forming  a  fund  against  times 
of  need.] 

The  weapons  of  this  warfare  are  advice,  and  friendship, 
and  humanity  at  all  times  ready,  without  [being]  at  any 
time  impertinent,  and  the  well-earned  confidence  which  is 
ever  sure  to  follow  in  the  train  of  tried  and  demonstrated 
worth — these,  when  wielded  for  a  long  time  by  the  same 
individual  on  the  same  contiguous  families,  will  work 
an  effect  of  improvement  which  never  can  be  attained 
by  all  the  devices  and  labors  of  ordinary  committeeship. 

There  are  so  many  philanthropists  in  this  our  day  that 
if  each  of  them  who  is  qualified  were  to  betake  himself 
in  his  own  line  of  usefulness  to  one  given  locality,  it 
would  soon  work  a  great  and  visible  effect  upon  society. 
.  .  .  But  there  is  a  temporary  hindrance  to  it,  in  the 
prevailing  spirit  of  the  times.  The  truth  is  that  a  task 
so  isolated  as  that  which  we  are  now  prescribing  does  not 
suit  with  the  present  rage  for  generalizing.  There  is  an 
appetite  for  designs  of  magnificence.  There  is  an  im- 
patience of  everything  short  of  a  universal  scheme  land- 
ing in  a  universal  result.  Nothing  will  serve  but  a  mighty 
organization  with  the  promise  of  mighty  consequences; 


106  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

and  let  any  single  person  be  infected  with  this  spirit,  and 
he  may  decline  from  the  work  of  a  single  court  or  lane 
in  a  city  as  an  object  far  too  limited  for  his  contemplation. 
He  may  like  to  share  with  others  in  the  enterprise  of 
subordinating  a  whole  city  to  the  power  of  some  great 
and  combined  operation.  And  we  may  often  have  to 
deliver  a  man  from  this  ambitious  tendency  ere  we  can 
prevail  upon  him  to  sit  humbly  and  perseveringly  down 
to  his  task;  ere  we  can  lead  him  to  forget  the  whole  and 
practically  give  himself  to  one  of  its  particulars;  ere 
we  can  satisfy  him  that,  should  he  moralize  one  district 
of  three  hundred  people,  he  will  not  have  lived  in  vain; 
ere  we  can  get  him  to  pervade  his  locality  and  quit  his 
speculation. 

This  spirit  has  restrained  the  march  of  philanthropy 
as  effectually  as,  in  other  days,  it  did  that  of  philosophy. 
In  the  taste  for  splendid  generalities  it  was  long  ere  the 
detail  and  the  drudgery  of  experimental  science  were 
entered  upon.  There  is  a  sound  and  inductive  method 
of  philanthropy  as  well  as  a  sound  and  inductive  method 
of  philosophizing.  A  few  patient  disciples  of  the  ex- 
perimental school  have  constructed  a  far  nobler  and  more 
enduring  fabric  of  truth  than  all  the  old  schoolmen  put 
together  could  have  reared.  And  could  we  prevail  on 
those  that  are  unwearied  in  well-doing,  each  to  take  his 
own  separate  slip  or  portion  of  the  vast  territory  that  lies 
before  us  and  to  go  forth  upon  it  with  the  one  prepara- 
tion of  common-sense  and  common  sympathy;  and,  re- 
signing his  more  extended  imaginations,  actually  to  work 
with  the  materials  that  are  put  into  his  hand,  we  would, 


INFLUENCE    OP    LOCALITY  107 

in  this  inductive  way  of  it,  arrive  at  a  far  more  solid  as 
well  as  striking  consummation  than  ever  can  be  realized 
by  any  society  of  wide  and  lofty  undertakings. 

The  individual  who  thus  sits  soberly  down  to  a  work 
that  is  commensurate  with  the  real  mediocrity  of  human 
powers  will  soon  meet  with  much  to  reconcile  him  to  the 
enterprise.  He  will  not  fail  to  contrast  the  impotency 
of  every  general  management,  in  reference  to  the  whole, 
with  the  efficacy  of  his  own  special  management,  in 
reference  to  a  part.  .  .  .  He  loses  a  splendid  de- 
ception, and  he  gets,  in  exchange  for  it,  a  solid  reality, 
and  a  reality,  too,  which  will  at  length  grow  and  brighten 
into  splendor  by  the  simple  apposition  of  other  districts 
to  his  own.  .  .  . 

There  is  an  impatience  on  the  part  of  many  a  raw 
and  sanguine  philanthropist  for  doing  something  great; 
and,  akin  to  this,  there  is  an  impatience  for  doing  that 
great  thing  speedily.  They  spurn  the  condition  of  driv- 
elling among  littles;  and  unless  there  be  a  redeeming 
magnificence  in  the  whole  operation,  of  which  they  bear 
a  part,  are  there  some  who  could  not  be  satisfied  with  a 
humble  and  detached  allotment  in  the  great  vineyard 
of  human  usefulness. 

A  Sabbath-school  for  one  city  parish  has  a  greatly 
more  limited  aim  than  a  Sabbath-school  society  for  the 
whole  of  Scotland.  And  yet,  in  opposition  to  the  maxim 
that  union  is  power,  would  we  strongly  advise  the  man- 
agers of  every  parochial  society  to  refuse  every  other 
alliance  than  that  of  good-will  with  any  wider  associa- 
tion; to  maintain  within  its  own  limits  the  vitality  and 


108  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

spirit  of  a  wholly  independent  existence;  to  resist  every 
offered  extension  of  its  mechanism,  and  rather  leave  the 
contiguous  parish  to  follow  its  example  than  lay  upon  it 
a  chain  of  fellowship  which  will  only  damp  the  alacrity 
and  impede  the  movements  of  both.  Not  that  we  at  all 
admire  the  narrowness  of  an  unsocial  spirit  which  cares 
for  nothing  beyond  the  confines  of  its  own  territory.  It 
is  simply  that  we  hold  it  to  be  bad  moral  tactics  thus  to 
extend  the  field  of  management,  thus  to  bring  a  whole 
city  or  a  whole  province  under  one  unwieldy  jurisdic- 
tion, thus  to  weaken  by  dispersion  the  interest  which  we 
think  is  far  more  vivid  and  effective  when  concentrated 
upon  one  given  locality,  thus  to  exchange  the  kindliness 
of  a  small  appropriated  home  for  the  cold  lustre  of  a 
wider  and  more  public  management,  thus  to  throw  our- 
selves abroad,  over  an  expanse  of  superficiality,  instead 
of  thoroughly  pervading  and  filling  up  each  of  its  sub- 
ordinate sections.  We  have,  in  fact,  somewhat  of  the 
same  antipathy  to  a  general  society  for  matters  spiritual 
that  we  have  to  a  general  session  for  matters  temporal; 
and  we  are  most  thoroughly  persuaded  that  the  less  we 
are  linked  and  hampered  with  one  another  the  more  ef- 
fective will  be  all  our  operations. 

In  the  work  of  filling  up  a  parish  with  Sabbath-schools 
we  would  recommend  the  local  system  in  its  purest  form; 
that  is,  that  a  small  separate  district  should  be  assigned 
to  each  teacher,  and  that  it  should  no  more  be  his  prac- 
tice to  draw  the  young  from  all  parts  of  the  parish  in- 
discriminately than  to  draw  them  from  all  parts  of  the 
city  indiscriminately.  There  are  many  parishes  in  the 


INFLUENCE    OF    LOCALITY  109 

empire  of  a  population  that  would  require  fifty  teachers 
for  their  thorough  cultivation;  and  the  danger  is  that 
in  the  hurry  of  an  ambitious  desire  to  get  up  a  com- 
plete apparatus  there  may  be  a  rapidity,  and  a  regard- 
lessness  of  qualification  in  the  admissions  of  new  agency. 
It  were  greatly  better  that  the  promoters  of  such  an 
undertaking  should  begin  with  one  extremity  of  the 
ground  upon  which  they  have  entered,  cautiously  pro- 
vide for  each  department  as  they  move  onward  toward 
the  other  extremity,  and  leave  a  portion  for  a  time  in 
an  outfield  state  rather  than  precipitate  the  appointments 
or  assign  to  any  a  larger  allocation  than  he  can  com- 
fortably or  effectually  pervade. 

[A  scheme  for  covering  the  whole  city  at  once  pro- 
vokes dissension  and  ends  in  speechifying  and  neglect 
of  practical  work.  A  good  example  of  right  method  is 
that  of  the  Saltmarket  Sabbath-school  Society,  which 
undertook  labors  in  a  population  of  3,624  souls.  It  be- 
gan with  four  teachers,  and  soon  had  pervaded  the  en- 
tire district  and  had  420  scholars  in  fourteen  schools, 
more  than  one-ninth  of  all.  Of  the  success  of  this  dis- 
trict he  says:] 

We  never  witnessed  so  rapid  a  cultivation;  and  when, 
on  visiting  the  school  a  few  months  after  its  establish- 
ment, we  beheld  the  dress  and  decency  of  their  exterior, 
and  marked  the  general  propriety  of  their  manners,  and 
observed  the  feeling  that  was  evident  in  the  replies  of 
some,  and  the  talent  and  promptitude  that  shone  forth 
in  the  replies  of  many;  when,  along  with  all  this,  we 
were  made  to  rejoice  in  the  greetings  of  the  assembled 


110  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

parentage,  and  shared  their  triumph  and  satisfaction  in 
the  proficiency  of  their  own  offspring,  whom,  poor  as 
they  were,  they,  out  of  their  own  unaided  resources,  had 
so  respectably  arrayed;  when  we  further  reflected  that 
the  living  scene  before  us  was  not  made  up  of  the  scant- 
lings of  a  wrhole  city,  but  was  formed  by  the  compact 
population  of  one  small  but  thoroughly  explored  vicin- 
age, with  our  eyes  open  to  what  had  thus  been  done  by 
the  moral  force  of  care  and  kindness  on  the  part  of  one 
individual,  we  could  not  miss  the  inference  that,  with 
a  right  distribution,  it  was  in  the  power  of  a  number  of 
individuals  to  throw  another  aspect  over  the  habit  and 
character  of  another  generation. 

It  is  not  to  the  labors  of  those  who  are  universalists  in 
science  that  she  stands  indebted  for  her  present  solidity, 
or  her  present  elevation,  but  to  the  separate  labors  of 
many,  each  occupying  his  own  little  field,  and  heaping, 
on  the  basis  of  former  acquisitions,  his  own  distinct  and 
peculiar  offering.  And  it  is  just  so  in  philanthropy. 
The  spirit  of  it  has  gone  marvellously  abroad  among 
us  of  late  years,  but  still  clouded  and  misled  by  the  be- 
wildering glare  which  the  fancy  of  ambitious  man  is 
apt  to  throw  around  his  own  undertakings.  He  would 
be  the  sole  creator  of  a  magnificent  erection,  rather  than 
a  humble  contributor  to  it,  among  a  thousand  more,  each 
as  necessary  and  important  as  himself.  And  yet,  would 
he  only  resign  his  speculations  and  give  himself  to  the 
execution  of  a  task  to  which  his  own  personal  faculties 
were  adequate,  he  would  meet  with  much  to  compensate 
the  loss  of  those  splendid  delusions  which  have  hitherto 


INFLUENCE    OF    LOCALITY  111 

engrossed  him.  There  would  be  less  of  the  glare  of 
publicity,  but  there  would  be  more  of  the  kindliness  of 
a  quiet  and  sheltered  home.  .  .  .  He  could  not,  by 
his  own  solitary  strength,  advance  the  little  stone  into 
a  great  mountain,  but  the  worth  and  efficacy  of  his  labors 
will  be  sure  to  recommend  them  to  the  imitation  of 
many,  and  the  good  work  will  spread  by  example  from 
one  individual  and  from  one  district  to  another;  and, 
though  he  may  be  lost  to  observation,  in  the  growing 
magnitude  of  the  operations  which  surround  him,  yet 
will  he  rejoice  even  in  his  very  insignificance,  as  the  be- 
fitting condition  for  one  to  occupy  among  the  many  mill- 
ions of  the  species  to  which  he  belongs;  and  it  will  be 
enough  for  him  that  he  has  added  one  part,  however 
small,  to  the  great  achievement  which  can  only  be  com- 
pleted by  the  exertions  of  an  innumerable  multitude,  and 
the  fruit  of  which  is  to  fill  the  whole  earth. 


CHAPTER  III 

APPLICATION     OF     THE     PRINCIPLE     OF     LOCALITY    IN 
TOWNS  TO  THE  WORK  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  MINISTER 

IT  is  perhaps  the  best  among  all  our  more  general 
arguments  for  a  religious  establishment  in  a  country 
that  the  spontaneous  demand  of  human  beings  for  re- 
ligion is  far  short  of  the  actual  interest  which  they  have 
in  it.  This  is  not  so  with  their  demand  for  food  and 
raiment,  or  any  article  which  ministers  to  the  necessi- 
ties of  our  physical  nature.  The  more  destitute  we  are 
of  these  articles  the  greater  is  our  desire  after  them.  In 
every  case  where  the  want  of  anything  serves  to  whet 
our  appetite  instead  of  weakening  it,  the  supply  of  that 
thing  may  be  left  with  all  safety  to  the  native  and  pow- 
erful demand  for  it  among  the  people  themselves.  .  .  . 
It  is  wise  in  government  to  leave  the  care  of  the  public 
good,  wherever  it  can  be  left  safely,  to  the  workings  of 
individual  nature,  and,  saving  for  the  administration  of 
justice  between  man  and  man,  it  were  better  that  she 
never  put  out  her  hand,  either  with  a  view  to  regulate 
or  to  foster  any  of  the  operations  of  common  merchan- 
dise. -... 

[On  this  condition  of  a  deep  human  interest  in  relig- 
ion, without  an  imperative  demand  for  it  until  the  spir- 

112 


PRINCIPLE  OF  LOCALITY  IN  PASTORAL  SERVICE  113 

itual  nature  is  aroused  by  missionary  effort,  he  bases  an 
argument  for  a  state  supported  church.  But  he  would 
not  restrict  the  free  activity  of  dissenters  by  law,  and 
for  these  he  asks  tolerance.] 

At  the  same  time  we  hope  that  no  restriction  what- 
ever will  be  laid  on  the  zeal  and  exertion  of  dissenters, 
and  that  any  legal  disability  under  which  they  still  labor 
will  at  length  be  done  away.  The  truth  is  that  we  know 
not  a  better  remedy  against  the  temporary  and  inciden- 
tal evils  of  an  establishment  than  a  free,  entire,  and 
unexcepted  toleration;  nor  how  an  endowed  church  can 
be  more  effectually  preserved,  either  from  stagnation  or 
decay,  than  by  being  ever  stimulated  and  kept  on  the 
alert  through  the  talent  and  energy,  and  even  occasional 
malignity  and  injustice  of  private  adventurers. 

In  order  that  men  may  become  Christians  there  must 
either  be  an  obtruding  of  Christianity  on  the  notice  of 
the  people,  or  the  people  must  be  waited  for  till  they 
move  themselves  in  quest  of  Christianity.  We  appre- 
hend that  the  former,  or  what  may  be  called  the  aggres- 
sive way  of  it,  is  the  most  effectual.  Nature  does  not 
go  forth  in  search  of  Christianity,  but  Christianity  goes 
forth  to  knock  at  the  door  of  nature,  and,  if  possible, 
awaken  her  out  of  her  sluggishness.  This  was  the  way 
of  it  at  its  first  promulgation.  It  is  the  way  of  it  in  every 
missionary  enterprise.  .  .  . 

[Here  follows  the  conclusion,  so  alien  to  primitive  and 
to  American  Christianity,  that  the  government  must  be 
depended  on,  and  not  the  Church,  for  the  spiritual  initi- 
ative in  this  missionary  effort.] 
8 


114  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

In  our  last  chapter  we  made  a  comparison  between 
local  and  general  Sabbath-schools.  Now  a  church  is,  or 
easily  might  be,  in  effect,  a  local  Sabbath-school.  Its 
district  is,  or  ought  to  be,  the  parish  with  which  it  stands 
nominally  associated,  and  its  sitters  ought  to  be  the  in- 
habitants of  that  parish. 

The  influence  of  locality  may  be  resolved  into  two 
influences;  first,  that  which  operates  on  the  agent  to 
whom  the  locality  is  assigned;  and,  secondly,  that  which 
operates  on  the  people  who  reside  within  the  field  of  his 
undertaking. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  it  is  not  so  likely  that  a  min- 
ister will  go  forth  on  his  share  of  the  population,  when 
spread  at  random  over  the  whole  city,  as  when  they  lie 
within  the  limits  of  a  space  that  is  overtakeable.  He 
feels  an  incitement  to  move  in  the  latter  way  of  it, 
which  he  does  not  feel  when  his  attentions  are  dispersed 
over  a  wide  and  bewildering  generality.  He,  under  the 
one  arrangement,  may  have  a  rare  and  rapid  and  tran- 
sient intercourse  with  the  individuals  of  a  diffused  mul- 
titude; but  this  can  never  ripen  into  solid  acquaintance- 
ship with  more  than  a  very  few.  Under  the  other 
arrangement  he  may,  at  a  greatly  less  expense,  attain  to 
terms  of  confidence  with  some,  and  of  familiarity  with 
many.  And  it  would  add  prodigiously  to  this  operation 
were  his  hearers  on  the  Sabbath  also  his  parochial  ac- 
quaintances through  the  week. 

The  second  influence  of  locality  is  that  by  which  the 
people  obtain  a  more  intense  feeling  of  their  relation- 
ship to  their  minister.  It  is  incalculable  how  much  this 


PRINCIPLE  OF  LOCALITY  IN  PASTORAL  SERVICE  115 

last  is  promoted  by  the  mere  juxtaposition  of  the  people 
to  one  another.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  fanciful  in 
the  charm  which  we  thus  ascribe  to  locality.  It  is  the 
charm  of  tact  and  of  experience.  It  is  better  when  the 
people  who  live  beside  each  other  are  under  one  com- 
mon impression  of  good  from  their  minister  than  when 
these  same  people  live  asunder  from  each  other.  It  is 
not  known  how  much  that  impression  is  heightened  by 
sympathy.  Did  each  of  a  thousand  who  attend  a  dra- 
matic performance  satisfy  himself  with  reading  the  com- 
position at  home,  the  total  impression  among  them  were 
not  half  so  powerful  as  when,  within  the  infection  of 
one  another's  feelings,  they  sit  together  at  its  represen- 
tation in  a  theatre.  This  is,  in  part,  due  to  the  power 
of  sensible  exhibition  in  the  acting.  But  it  is  also  due, 
in  great  part,  to  the  operation  of  sympathy.  And  when 
contiguous  families  hear  the  same  minister  on  the  Sab- 
bath, or  come  within  the  scope  of  the  same  household 
attentions  on  other  days,  there  is  between  them,  through 
the  week,  a  prolonged  and  often  a  cherished  sympathy 
which,  were  the  families  widely  apart  in  distant  places 
of  a  town,  would  have  no  operation.  ...  It  would 
draw  next-door  families  into  closer  and  nearer  relation- 
ship with  each  other,  and  shed  a  mild,  moral  lustre  over 
many  vicinities,  now  crowded  with  human  beings,  but 
desolate  in  respect  of  all  those  feelings  which  go  to 
sweeten  and  solace  human  bosoms.  It  would,  in  fact, 
go  a  certain  way  to  transplant  into  our  larger  towns  the 
kindliness  of  select  and  limited  intercourse,  so  that,  even 
though  the  minister  could  be  the  visitant  of  as  many 


116  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

families,  and  the  friend  of  as  many  individuals,  on  the 
general  as  on  the  local  system,  yet  the  very  circumstance 
of  their  being  scattered,  instead  of  being  contiguous, 
makes  a  heavy  deduction  from  the  amount  of  his  influ- 
ence upon  them. 

But,  after  all,  the  argument  of  greatest  strength  for 
a  strictly  parochial  system  in  towns  is  identical  with  the 
argument  for  a  religious  establishment  all  over  the  coun- 
try. People  will  not  be  drawn  in  such  abundance  to 
Christianity  by  a  mere  process  of  attraction,  as  Christi- 
anity can  be  made  to  radiate  upon  them  by  a  process  of 
emanation.  .  .  .  It  is  not  mere  Sabbath  preaching 
that  will  retain,  or  far  less  recall,  a  people  to  the  ordi- 
nances of  Christianity.  It  is  not  even  this  preaching, 
seconded  by  the  most  strenuous  week-day  attentions,  to 
hearers  lying  thinly  and  confusedly  scattered  over  a  wide 
and  fatiguing  territory.  With  such  a  bare  and  general 
superintendence  as  this,  many  are  the  families  that  will 
fall  out  of  notice;  and  there  will  be  the  breaking  out  of 
many  intermediate  spaces,  in  which  there  must  grow 
and  gather,  every  year,  a  wider  alienation  from  all  the 
habits  of  a  country  parish;  and  the  minister,  occupied 
with  his  extra-parochial  congregation,  will  be  bereft  of 
all  his  natural  influence  over  a  locality  which  is  but  nom- 
inally his.  The  reciprocal  influence  of  his  Sabbath  and 
week-day  ministrations  on  each  other  is  entirely  lost  un- 
der such  an  arrangement.  The  truth  is,  that  let  him 
move  through  his  parish,  he  may  not  find  so  much  as  a 
hundred  hearers  within  its  limits  out  of  more  than  ten 
times  that  number  who  attend  upon  him.  .  .  .  Un- 


PRINCIPLE  OF  LOCALITY  IN   PASTORAL  SERVICE  117 

der  the  paralyzing  influence  of  the  present  system  it  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  urgency  for  seats  should 
have  fallen  so  greatly  in  the  rear  of  the  increasing  rate 
of  population,  and  that  the  habit  of  attendance  on  any 
place  of  religious  instruction  whatever  should  have  gone 
so  wofully  into  desuetude,  and  that  the  feeble  operation 
of  waiting  a  demand,  instead  of  stimulating,  should  be 
so  incompetent  to  reclaim  this  habit ;  and  that  the  labor- 
ing classes  in  towns  should  have  become  so  generally 
alienated  from  the  religious  establishment  of  the  land; 
and,  what  is  worse  than  the  desertion  of  establishments, 
that  a  fearful  majority  should  be  now  forming,  and  likely 
to  increase  every  year,  who  are  not  merely  away  from  all 
churches,  but  so  far  away  as  to  be  beyond  the  supple- 
mentary operation  of  all  meeting-houses,  a  majority  that 
is  fast  thickening  upon  our  hands,  and  who  will  be  sure 
to  return  all  the  disorders  of  week-day  profligacy  upon 
the  country,  because  that  country  has,  in  fact,  abandoned 
them  to  the  ever-plying  incitements  and  opportunities 
of  Sabbath  profanation. 

In  a  country  parish  the  number  who  should  be  in  at- 
tendance upon  church  is  computed  at  one-half  of  the 
whole  population.  In  towns,  where  the  obstacle  of  dis- 
tance is  not  to  be  overcome,  a  larger  proportion  than 
this  is  generally  fixed  upon.  We  think  it,  however,  over- 
rated at  two-thirds,  and  shall  therefore  assign  the  inter- 
mediate fraction  of  five-eighths  as  the  ratio  which  the 
church-going  inhabitants  of  a  town  should  bear  to  the 
total  number  of  them. 


118  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

[He  takes  a  district  of  Glasgow  for  illustration.  This 
district  had  a  population  of  10,304,  of  whom  less  than 
one-fifth  attended  church.  He  pays  a  tribute  to  the  zeal 
of  dissenters  who  helped  to  attract  many  who  had  neg- 
lected the  established  church.  As  to  the  social  conse- 
quences of  this  neglect  he  proceeds  to  say:] 

When  we  contemplate  the  magnitude  of  those  suburb 
wastes,  which  have  formed  so  rapidly  around  the  me- 
tropolis and  every  commercial  city  of  our  land;  when 
we  think  of  the  quantity  of  lawless  spirit  which  has  been 
permitted  to  ferment  and  to  multiply  there,  afar  from 
the  contact  of  every  softening  influence,  and  without  one 
effectual  hand  put  forth  to  stay  the  great  and  the  growing 
distemper;  when  we  estimate  the  families  which,  from 
infancy  to  manhood,  have  been  unvisited  by  any  message 
from  Christianity,  and  on  whose  consciences  the  voice  of 
Him  who  speaketh  the  word  that  is  from  heaven  has 
never  descended,  we  cannot  but  charge  that  country, 
which,  satisfied  if  it  neutralize  the  violence,  rears  no 
preventive  barrier  against  the  vices  of  the  people,  with 
the  guilt  of  inflicting  upon  itself  moral  if  not  a  political 
suicide.  .  .  . 

[After  reciting  the  story  of  failure  in  a  district  where 
a  church  was  established  and  a  series  of  able  preachers 
came  to  deliver  sermons  at  the  people  without  parish 
ministrations,  he  adds:] 

It  is  not  with  rare  and  extraordinary  talent  conferred 
upon  a  few,  but  with  habits  and  principles  which  may 


PRINCIPLE  OF  LOCALITY  IN   PASTORAL  SERVICE   119 

be  cultivated  by  all,  that  are  linked  our  best  securities 
for  the  reformation  of  the  world.  This  is  a  work  which 
will  mainly  be  done  with  every-day  instruments  operat- 
ing upon  every-day  materials;  and  more,  too,  by  the 
multiplication  of  laborers  than  by  the  gigantic  labor  of 
a  small  number  of  individuals. 

And  here  let  it  be  remarked  how  effectually  it  is  that 
Sabbath-evening  schools  subserve  the  prospective  ar- 
rangement which  we  are  now  contemplating.  It  requires 
a  much  harder  struggle  than  most  of  us  are  aware  of  to 
prevail  on  grown-up  people,  who  never  have  attended 
church,  to  become  the  members  either  of  a  day  or  an 
evening  congregation.  .  .  .  But  the  compliance 
which  cannot  be  won  in  manhood  for  attendance  on  a 
church,  we  win  in  boyhood  for  attendance  on  a  school; 
and  when  the  boy  becomes  a  man,  a  second  effort  is  not 
necessary.  .  .  . 

It  is  felt  by  many  as  a  deduction  from  the  good  of 
the  local  system  in  towns  that  the  poorer  among  the 
families  so  frequently  change  their  places  of  residence, 
and  that  there  must  not  only  be  the  same  parish  but 
also  the  same  parishioners,  else  the  acquaintanceship 
which  is  formed  will  be  constantly  liable  to  be  broken 
up  by  the  constant  dispersion  of  its  members.  The  quan- 
tity of  fluctuation  is  greatly  overrated.  .  .  .  The 
truth  is  that  the  movement  is  far  more  a  vibratory  than 
a  successive  one.  The  families  that  leave  a  parish  this 
year  are,  in  a  great  measure,  the  very  families  that  came 
to  it  last  year.  There  is  a  certain  number,  and  those 
chiefly  of  the  worse-conditioned  of  the  population,  who 


120  CHEISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

are  constantly  upon  the  wing:  and  they  alternate  from 
one  parish  to  another,  over  the  heads  of  the  stable  popu- 
lation. A  locally  parochial  system  would  serve,  in  the 
long  run,  to  retain  even  these;  but,  even  in  their  pres- 
ent amount,  they  leave  the  great  bulk  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  every  parish  in  a  fixed  and  permanent  state  for 
any  species  of  cultivation  that  might  be  applied  to 
them.  .  .  . 

There  is  nothing  in  the  mere  circumstance  of  being 
born  in  a  town,  or  of  being  imported  into  it  from  the 
country,  which  can  at  all  obliterate  or  reverse  any  of  the 
laws  of  our  sentient  nature.  That  law  in  virtue  of  which 
a  feeling  of  cordiality  is  inspired,  even  by  a  single  act 
of  recognition,  and  in  virtue  of  which  it  is  augmented 
into  a  fixed  personal  regard  by  many  such  acts,  operates 
with  just  as  much  vigor  in  the  one  situation  as  it  does 
in  the  other.  In  towns  everything  has  been  done  to 
impede  the  reiteration  of  the  same  attentions  upon  the 
same  families.  The  relationship  between  ministers  and 
their  parishes  has,  to  every  moral  and  to  every  civilizing 
purpose,  been  nearly  as  good  as  broken  up.  Everything 
has  been  permitted  to  run  at  random;  and,  as  a  fruit  of 
the  utter  disregard  of  the  principle  of  locality,  have  the 
city  clergyman  and  his  people  almost  lost  sight  of  each 
other.  It  is  the  intimacy  of  connection  between  these 
two  parties  which  has  impressed  its  best  and  most  pe- 
culiar features  on  the  Scottish  nation;  and  it  were  giv- 
ing way  to  a  mystic  imagination  altogether  did  we  not 
believe  that  the  treatment  of  human  nature  which  leads 
to  a  particular  result  in  the  country  would,  if  transplanted 


PRINCIPLE  OF  LOCALITY  IN  PASTORAL  SERVK '!•:   121 

into  towns,  lead  to  the  same  result  on  their  crowded 
families. 

There  must  be  a  previous  operation  upon  the  people 
ere  the  desire  or  the  demand  for  Sabbath  accommodation 
can  guarantee  to  the  builders  of  churches  that  their 
churches  shall  be  filled.  For  this  purpose  we  hold  the 
strict  and,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  the  exclusive  union  of 
churches  with  their  parishes  to  be  indispensable;  and, 
even  with  this  advantage,  do  we  think  that  the  existing 
habit  of  alienation  from  ordinances,  instead  of  being  al- 
together reclaimed  by  exertion,  will,  in  part,  need  to  be 
removed  by  death ;  and  that  it  is  mainly  to  an  operation 
upon  the  young,  and  that  through  the  medium  of  Sab- 
bath-schools, that  we  have  to  look  for  the  coming  in  of 
a  better  order  of  things  with  the  coming  up  of  another 
generation. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  EFFECT  OF  LOCALITY  IN  ADDING  TO  THE  USEFUL 
ESTABLISHMENTS   OF   A   TOWN 

IT  were,  perhaps,  a  sanguine  anticipation  to  expect 
that  the  gradual  process  unfolded  in  the  last  chapter  for 
reclaiming  the  people  of  our  cities  to  a  habit  of  attend- 
ance on  the  ordinances  of  Christianity  should  be  com- 
pleted in  the  course  of  one,  or  even  of  two,  generations. 

[Even  with  a  rapid  gain  of  the  State  Church  there 
would  be  as  much  room  as  ever  for  dissenters,  and  their 
help  would  be  needed;  so  that  envy  is  unreasonable.] 

There  is  a  direct  and  arithmetical  style  of  computation 
which  often  fails  when  it  is  applied  to  the  phenomena 
or  the  principles  of  human  nature.  It  is  thus,  for  ex- 
ample, that  many  conceive  an  alarm  lest  one  benevolent 
society  should  suffer  in  its  revenues  when  another  benevo-. 
lent  society  is  instituted  in  the  same  town  and  among 
the  same  people.  They  calculate  by  a  mere  process  of 
subtraction  upon  the  money  of  subscribers,  and  they  do 
not  calculate  on  the  moral  impulse  which  every  new 
scheme  of  philanthropy  is  calculated  to  send  into  their 
hearts.  They  seem  not  aware  that  the  mere  habit  of 

liberality  in  behalf  of  one  object  renders  them  more  ac- 

122 


LOCALITY  AS  AN  AID  TO  TOWN  ESTABLISHMENTS  123 

cessible  to  the  claims  of  a  new  object,  than  if  the  habit 
had  not  previously  been  called  into  existence.  The 
truth  is  that,  after  all  which  is  given  away  in  liberality, 
there  is  still  left,  in  the  fund  for  such  luxuries  as  may 
easily  be  dispensed  with  and  in  the  fund  which  goes  to 
the  loose  and  floating  expenses  of  pocket-money,  an  am- 
ple remainder  for  meeting  fresh  and  frequent  applica- 
tions. .  .  . 

[There  follows  an  argument  which  shows  that  Chal- 
mers was  already  gaining  an  insight  into  the  evils  of  a 
State  Church.  He  shows  that  towns  were  neglecting 
local  enterprise  because  they  had  come  to  look  up  to  and 
depend  upon  the  government  for  support.  He  reaches 
a  conclusion  since  substantiated  in  the  main  by  Amer- 
ican experience:] 

"We  contemplate  a  great  national  effect,  not  as  the 
result  of  any  corporate  movement  or  any  legislative 
operation,  but  as  the  result  of  a  slow  accumulative  proc- 
ess, helped  forward  mainly  by  the  growth  and  expansion 
of  Christian  philanthropy  in  our  land,  and  at  length  com- 
pleted into  a  whole  by  the  simple  apposition  of  parts 
done  separately  and  done  independently. 

It  is  the  misfortune  both  of  a  civic  and  of  a  national 
legislator  that  he  deals  so  much  in  generalities.  He  casts 
a  hurried  glance  over  the  whole  field  of  contemplation, 
and  the  influence  of  what  he  does  or  of  what  he  devises 
is  thinly  spread  along  the  face  of  the  territory  before 
him.  He  is  seldom  arrested  by  that  dull  and  humbling 
arithmetic  which  casts  up  to  him  the  utter  insignificance 


124  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

of  all  that  he  has  attempted  on  the  general  mass  and 
habit  of  society.  He  vainly  tries  by  his  one  enactment 
to  measure  strength  with  the  needs  or  the  immoralities 
of  a  vast  population.  Nor  will  he  submit  to  the  morti- 
fication of  being  told  that  though  the  sound  of  it  has 
gone  forth  among  all  the  sensible  and  pervading  influ- 
ence of  it  is  scarcely  felt  among  any.  It  is  the  wideness 
of  his  survey  which  makes  him  overlook  particulars,  and 
with  his  habit  of  largely  expatiating  does  he  neglect 
completely  and  minutely  to  fill  up.  This  it  is  which 
accounts  for  the  utter  futility  of  many  projects  splendid 
in  promise,  and  vanishing  away  into  a  meagre  accom- 
plishment. This  it  is  which  explains  the  abortive 
magnificence  of  many  of  our  great  national  undertak- 
ings. .  .  . 

The  prevailing  tendency  hitherto  has  been  to  attempt 
great  things  rather  than  do  small  things  thoroughly  and 
well;  to  set  up  a  mechanism  which  will  work  for  the 
whole  city,  rather  than  reduce  the  city  into  manageable 
parts,  and  seek  for  the  accomplishment  that  is  proposed, 
by  the  mere  apposition  of  these  parts  to  each  other;  to 
aspire,  and  that  by  the  energies  of  one  grand  associa- 
tion, after  some  universal  result,  which  never  will  be 
reached  but  by  the  summing  up  of  the  separate  achieve- 
ments of  many  lesser  associations.  It  may  look  a  strange 
way  of  proposing  a  universal  good,  either  for  a  city  or 
for  a  nation,  to  bid  our  active  philanthropists  never  to 
admit  the  town  as  a  whole  into  any  of  their  speculations. 
But  we  are  quite  satisfied  that  much  of  that  effort  which 
would  else  have  been  productive  is  wasted. 


LOCALITY  AS  AN  AID  TO  TOWN  ESTABLISHMENTS   125 

Our  object  at  present  is  to  guide  to  its  highest  produc- 
tiveness the  benevolence  of  him  whose  station  and  op- 
portunities restrain  him  more  to  his  own  vicinity.  His 
best  contribution  to  the  interest  of  the  world  is  to  do 
the  humble  and  practicable  task  which  his  hand  findeth 
to  do,  and  to  do  it  with  all  his  might,  till  he  has  finished 
it  off.  A  single  obscure  street,  with  its  few  divergent 
lanes,  may  form  the  length  and  the  breadth  of  his  enter- 
prise ;  but  far  better  that  he,  with  such  means  and  such 
associates  as  are  within  his  reach,  should  do  this  thor- 
oughly than  that,  merging  himself  in  some  wider  asso- 
ciation, he  should  vainly  attempt  in  the  gross  that  which 
never  can  be  overtaken  but  in  humble  and  laborious  de- 
tail. Let  him  not  think  that  the  region  which  lies  beyond 
the  limits  of  his  chosen  and  peculiar  territory  is  to  wither 
and  be  neglected  because  his  presence  is  not  there  to 
fertilize  it.  Let  him  not  proudly  imagine  himself  to  be 
the  only  philanthropist  in  the  world.  Let  him  do  his 
part,  trusting  at  the  same  time  that  there  are  others 
around  him  who  have  zeal  enough  to  do  theirs.  .  .  . 
The  institutions  which  are  most  wanted  in  our  great 
towns  and  populous  villages  are  those  the  object  of  which 
is  the  Christian  education  of  our  laboring  classes.  This 
object  embraces  schools  for  ordinary  scholarship  through 
the  week  and  churches  for  the  delivery  of  gospel  doctrine 
and  exhortation  on  the  Sabbath. 

[Here  follows  a  scheme  for  equalizing  schools  to  the 
necessities  of  the  population.  On  this  subject  Dr.  Chal- 
mers had  published  a  treatise  on  the  "  System  of  Paro- 
chial Schools  in  Scotland."  The  plan  had  reference  to 


126  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

Scottish   conditions,    and    many   details   must    here   be 
omitted.] 

It  is  with  common  as  with  Christian  education.  There 
is  not  such  a  native  and  spontaneous  demand  for  it  in 
any  country  as  will  call  forth  a  supply  of  it  at  all  ade- 
quate to  the  needs  of  the  population.  If  the  people  are 
left  to  themselves  they  will  not  by  any  originating  move- 
ment of  their  own  emerge  out  of  ignorance  at  the  first ; 
nor  will  they  afterward  perpetuate  any  habit  of  educa- 
tion to  which  they  may  have  been  raised  in  the  course 
of  one  generation  if,  in  all  succeeding  generations,  they 
are  left  wholly  to  seek  after  scholarship  and  wholly  to 
pay  for  it.  To  keep  up  popular  learning  there  is  just 
the  same  reason  for  an  Establishment  as  we  have  already 
alleged  in  behalf  of  an  establishment  for  religion.  The 
article  must  be  obtruded  upon  them,  and,  in  some  de- 
gree, offered  to  them.  .  .  . 

[Dr.  Chalmers  did  not  think  absolutely  free  public 
schools  desirable.] 

We  have  attempted  to  expose  the  defects  both  of  a 
wholly  gratuitous  and  of  a  wholly  unendowed  system 
of  education;  affirming  that,  under  the  one  scheme,  the 
article  is  undervalued,  and  that  under  the  other  it  is  not 
sought  after  to  the  extent  to  which  it  would  be  beneficial. 

[Having  proposed  to  raise  a  fund  adequate  to  provide 
schools  for  all  children  of  each  parish,  with  tuition  at  a 
rate  so  low  as  to  be  within  reach  of  the  poor,  the  author 
meets  the  objection  that  this  is  a  visionary  theory.] 


LOCALITY   AS  AN  AID  TO  TOWN  ESTABLISHMENTS  127 

There  are  certain  of  our  mere  operatives  in  public 
business  who,  however  plentiful  their  reproach  of  others 
as  visionaries,  never  dream  that  they  are  visionaries  them- 
selves. They  seem  to  regard  it  as  their  sufficient  exemp- 
tion from  such  a  charge  that  their  hand  is  so  wholly 
occupied  in  practice  and  their  mind  so  little,  if  at  all, 
occupied  with  principle.  ...  It  would  look  that 
to  escape  from  being  a  theorist  upon  any  given  topic  it 
were  altogether  necessary  to  abstain  from  thinking  of  it; 
and  that,  to  stamp  a  sound  and  experimental  character 
on  a  man's  notions,  it  is  quite  enough  that  he  personally 
bustle  and  spend  all  his  time  among  the  mere  matters 
of  manipulation  and  detail.  Such  men,  perhaps,  in  the 
whole  course  of  their  lives  have  given  one  hour  of  medi- 
tative solitude  to  the  question  at  issue,  and  perhaps  think 
that  the  whole  effect  of  such  a  season  of  loneliness  would 
be  to  gather  around  them  the  spectres  of  vain  imagina- 
tion. They  have  no  other  conception  of  a  student  than 
as  of  one  that  muses  all  day  long  over  the  inapplicable 
abstractions  of  an  ideal  and  contemplative  region;  nor 
do  they  see  how,  in  calm  and  collected  retirement,  it  is 
possible  for  the  mind  to  calculate  and  to  recollect,  and 
to  be  altogether  conversant  among  the  realities  of  the 
living  world,  over  which  it  may  have  cast  a  most  obser- 
vant regard  and  the  well  known  familiarities  of  which 
it  is  able  to  turn  into  the  materials  of  a  just  view  and  a 
just  anticipation.  In  these  circumstances  it  ought  not 
to  be  wondered  at  that  practical  men  have  engrossed  the 
credit  of  all  the  practical  wisdom  that  there  is  in  society; 
and  that  they  have  missed  the  self-discernment  which 


128  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

might  have  led  them  to  perceive  that  the  possessor  of  a 
body  which  moves  its  dull  and  unvarying  round  through 
the  duties  of  public  office  and  of  a  mind  that  is  eifeher 
profoundly  asleep  to  the  rationale  of  public  affairs  or 
catches  its  occasional  view  of  them  by  rapid  and  con- 
fused glances — that  he,  with  all  the  confidence  which  a 
kind  of  coarse  and  hackneyed  experience  has  given  to 
him,  may  very  possibly  be  the  most  blundering  and  be- 
wildered of  all  visionaries. 

[When  the  government  gives  aid  the  announcement 
should  go  forth  that  this  aid  is  utterly  inadequate;  then 
voluntary  associations  will  come  to  supplement  the  state 
gift  with  local  contributions.  These  voluntary  associa- 
tions have  already  begun  excellent  educational  enter- 
prises, but  have  generally  fallen  short  of  the  highest 
success  through  the  error  of  attempting  more  than  their 
means  could  compass.  They  usually  plan  beyond  their 
ability  to  execute.] 

Instead  of  a  semblance  of  education  for  the  whole,  let 
there  be  the  substance  of  it  in  one  part,  and  this  will  at 
length  spread  and  propagate  its  own  likeness  over  all 
the  other  parts.  It  will  serve  like  the  touch  of  a  flame 
to  kindle  the  whole  mass  into  a  brilliancy  as  luminous 
as  its  own.  .  .  .  Our  earnest  advice  is  that  no  be- 
nevolent society  for  education  shall  undertake  a  larger 
space  of  the  city  than  it  can  provide  for,  both  completely 
and  perpetually,  by  reclaiming  its  families  to  a  habit 
of  scholarship  forever,  through  the  means  of  a  permanent 
endowment,  attached  exclusively  to  the  district  of  its 
operations.  It  is  far  better  to  cultivate  one  district  well, 


LOCALITY  AS  AN  AID  TO  TOWN  ESTABLISHMENTS  129 

though  all  the  others  should  be  left  untouched,  than  to 
superficialize  over  the  whole  city.  .  .  .  Let  none  of 
us  think  to  monopolize  all  the  benevolence  of  the  world, 
or  fear  that  no  future  band  of  philanthropists  shall  arise 
to  carry  forward  from  that  point  at  which  we  have  ex- 
hausted our  operations.  If  education  is  to  be  made  uni- 
versal in  towns  by  voluntary  benevolence,  it  will  not  be 
by  one  great,  but  by  many  small  and  successive,  exer- 
tions. The  thing  will  be  accomplished  piecemeal,  and 
what  never  could  be  done  through  the  working  of  one 
vast  and  unwieldy  mechanism  may  thus  be  completed 
most  easily  in  the  course  of  a  single  generation.  . 

It  is  not  known  how  precious  and  how  productive  a 
thing  the  operation  of  this  local  interest  is,  even  in  the 
poorest  of  our  districts.  The  capabilities  of  humble  life 
are  yet  far  from  being  perfectly  understood  or  turned 
to  the  full  account  of  which  they  are  susceptible.  We 
certainly  invite,  and  with  earnestness,  too,  the  man  of 
fortune  and  philanthropy  to  assume  a  locality  to  himself 
and  head  an  enterprise  for  schools  in  behalf  of  its  here- 
tofore neglected  population.  But  little  is  it  known  to 
what  extent  the  fund  may  be  augmented  by  pains  and 
perseverance  among  the  population  themselves.  With  a 
little  guidance  in  fact  may  the  poor  be  made  the  most 
effective  instruments  of  their  own  amelioration.  The 
system  which  could  raise  a  single  penny  in  the  week 
from  each  family  would  of  its  own  unaided  self  both 
erect  and  perpetuate  a  sufficient  apparatus  for  schooling 
over  the  whole  empire,  or  any  part  into  which  it  was 
introduced,  in  about  twelve  years.  This  is  a  mine  which 
9 


130  CHRISTIAN   AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

has  lately  been  entered  upon  for  tlie  purpose  of  aiding 
those  excellent  religious  charities  that  have  so  signalized 
our  nation;  and  more  is  extracted  from  it  than  from  all 
the  liberalities  of  the  opulent.  In  a  cause  so  near  and 
so  exciting  as  that  of  home  education,  it  could,  by  dint 
of  strenuous  cultivation,  be  made  to  yield  much  more 
abundantly.  So  that,  should  the  rich  refuse  a  helping 
hand  to  a  cause  so  closely  associated  with  the  best  in- 
terests of  our  country,  we  do  not  despair  of  the  poor 
being  at  length  persuaded  to  take  it  upon  themselves, 
and  of  thus  leaving  the  higher  classes  behind  them  in 
the  career  of  an  enlightened  patriotism. 

Yet  it  were  well  that  the  rich  did  step  forward  and 
signalize  themselves  in  this  matter.  Amid  all  the  tur- 
bulence and  discontent  which  prevail  in  society  do  we 
believe  that  there  is  no  rancor  so  fiery  or  so  inveterate 
in  the  heart  of  the  laboring  classes  but  that  a  convincing 
demonstration  of  good-will  on  the  part  of  those  who  are 
raised  in  circumstances  above  them  could  not  charm  it 
most  effectually  away.  It  is  a  question  of  nicety,  how 
should  this  demonstration  be  rendered?  Not,  we  think, 
by  any  public  or  palpable  offering  to  the  cause  of  in- 
digence, for  this  we  have  long  conceived  should  be  left, 
and  left  altogether,  to  the  sympathies  of  private  inter- 
course; it  being,  we  believe,  a  point  of  uniform  experi- 
ence that  the  more  visible  the  apparatus  is  for  the  relief 
of  poverty,  the  more  is  it  fitted  to  defeat  its  own  object, 
and  to  scatter  all  the  jealousies  attendant  upon  an  imag- 
inary right  upon  those  who  might  else  have  been  sweet- 
ened into  gratitude  by  the  visitations  of  a  secret  and 


LOCALITY  AS  AN  AID  TO  TOWN  ESTABLISHMENTS   131 

spontaneous  kindness.  Not  so,  however,  with  an  offer- 
ing rendered  to  the  cause  of  education,  let  it  be  as  public 
or  as  palpable  as  it  may.  The  urgency  of  competition 
for  such  an  object  is  at  all  times  to  be  hailed  rather  than 
resisted;  and  on  this  career  of  benevolence,  therefore, 
may  the  affluent  go  indefinitely  onward  till  the  want 
be  fully  and  permanently  provided  for.  We  know  no 
exhibition  that  would  serve  more  to  tranquillize  our  coun- 
try than  one  which  might  convince  the  poorer  classes 
that  there  is  a  real  desire  on  the  part  of  their  superiors 
in  wealth  to  do  for  them  anything  which  they  believe 
to  be  for  their  good.  It  is  an  expression  of  an  interest 
in  them  which  does  so  much  to  soothe  and  to  pacify  the 
discontents  of  men;  and  all  that  is  wanted  is  that  the 
expression  shall  be  of  such  a  sort  as  not  to  injure,  but  to 
benefit  those  for  whom  it  is  intended. 

Ere  the  apparatus  shall  be  raised  which  is  able,  not 
faintly  to  skim,  but  thoroughly  to  saturate  the  families 
of  our  poor  with  education,  there  will  be  room  for  large 
sums  and  large  sacrifices;  nor  do  we  know  on  whom  the 
burden  of  this  cause  can  sit  so  gracefully  and  so  well  as 
on  those  who  have  speculated  away  their  feelings  of  at- 
tachment from  all  societies  for  the  relief  of  indigence 
.  .  .  and  who  are  now  bound  to  demonstrate  that  this  is 
not  because  their  judgment  has  extinguished  their  sensi- 
bilities, but  because  they  only  want  an  object  set  before 
them  which  may  satisfy  their  understanding,  that,  with- 
out doing  mischief,  they  may  largely  render  of  their 
means  to  the  promotion  of  it. 

We  are  sensible  that  to  look  for  a  universal  result,  in 


132  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  way  that  we  have  now  recommended,  is  to  presup- 
pose a  very  wide  extension  of  Christian  zeal,  seconded 
by  an  equal  degree  of  Christian  liberality  all  over  the 
land.  If  it  be  visionary  to  look  for  this,  then  do  we 
hold  it  alike  visionary  to  look  for  any  great  moral  im- 
provement in  the  economy  of  our  national  institutions 
without  this.  We  see  not  our  way  to  any  public  or 
extended  amelioration  save  through  the  medium  of 
greater  worth  in  the  character  of  individuals,  and  a 
greater  number  of  such  individuals  in  the  country;  and 
but  for  this  would  we  give  up  in  despair  that  cause  on 
which  both  politicians  and  moralists  have  embarked  so 
many  sanguine  speculations.  It  is  not,  we  think,  on  the 
arena  of  state  partisanship  that  a  victory  for  this  cause 
is  to  be  decided;  but  that,  similarly  to  the  growth  of 
the  small  prophetic  stone  which  at  length  attained  to  the 
size  of  a  mountain  that  filled  the  whole  earth,  will  it 
gradually  proceed  onwards,  just  as  the  spirit  and  prin- 
ciples of  the  gospel  find  a  numerical  way  through  hu- 
man hearts  and  multiply  their  proselytes  among  human 
families.  If  it  be  here  that  a  contemptuous  scepticism 
discovers  the  weak  side  of  our  argument,  and  proclaims 
it  accordingly,  it  is  also  here  that  prophecy  lifts  up  the 
light  of  its  cheering  countenance  on  all  our  anticipations. 
Meanwhile  its  best  and  brightest  fulfilments  are  not  to 
be  without  human  agency;  and  even  already  do  we  see 
a  rising  philanthropy  in  our  day  which  warrants  our 
fondest  hopes  both  of  the  increase  of  learning  and  virtue 
among  our  population.  For  a  time  it  may  waste  a  por- 
tion of  its  energies  among  the  by-paths  of  inexperience. 


LOCALITY  AS  AN  AID  TO  TOWN  ESTABLISHMENTS  133 

Ambition  may  bewilder  it.  Impatience  may  cause  it  to 
overrun  itself.  A  taste  for  generalities  may  dazzle  it 
into  many  fond  and  foolish  imaginations;  and  tlie  ridi- 
cule of  an  incredulous  public  may  await  the  mortifying 
failures  which  will  ever  mark  the  enterprise  of  him  whose 
aim.  is  beyond  the  means  of  his  accomplishment.  But 
the  spirit  of  benevolence  will  not  be  evaporated  among 
all  these  difficulties.  It  will  only  be  nurtured  into 
greater  strength,  and  guided  into  a  path  of  truer  wisdom, 
and  sobered  into  a  habit  of  more  humble  and  at  the  same 
time  far  more  effective  perseverance.  Man  will  at  length 
learn  to  become  more  practical  and  less  imaginative.  He 
will  hold  it  a  worthier  achievement  to  do  for  a  little  neigh- 
borhood than  to  devise  for  a  whole  world.  .  .  .  The 
glory  of  establishing  in  our  world  that  universal  reign 
of  truth  and  righteousness  which  is  coming  will  not  be 
the  glory  of  any  one  man,  but  it  will  be  the  glory  of 
Him  who  sitteth  above  and  plieth  His  many  millions  of 
instruments  for  bringing  about  this  magnificent  result. 
It  is  enough  for  each  of  us  to  be  one  of  these  instru- 
ments, to  contribute  his  little  item  to  the  cause,  and 
look  for  the  sum-total  as  the  product  of  innumerable 
contributions,  each  of  them  as  meritorious,  and  many  of 
them,  perhaps,  far  more  splendid  and  important  than 
our  own. 


CHAPTEK  V 

ON  CHURCH  PATRONAGE 

[THIS  chapter  deals  almost  entirely  with  phases  and 
problems  of  life  peculiar  to  Scotland,  and  now  radically 
changed  even  there.  The  separation  of  Church  and 
State  in  our  country  makes  obsolete  a  discussion  of  the 
way  of  adjustment  of  powers  of  State  and  Church  un- 
der one  government. 

The  author  recommends  that  local  schools  should  se- 
cure suitable  teachers  by  making  part  of  the  teacher's 
income  depend  on  his  pleasing  the  families  who  send 
their  children  and  who  pay  part  of  the  cost  in  tuition. 
In  the  same  way  he  thinks  the  rich  and  influential  should 
not  have  absolute  power  of  appointing  pastors,  but  that 
the  people  should  have  a  share  in  selecting  those  who 
are  to  minister  to  their  spiritual  needs.  If  the  pastor  is 
popular,  his  support  is  assured  out  of  the  gifts  of  the 
attendants.  "  That  the  house  be  well  filled,  the  great 
and  sufficient  step  is  that  the  pulpit  be  well  filled." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Chalmers  has  in  mind  a 
population  of  laboring  people  who  have  inherited  the  tra- 
ditions of  one  race  and  one  religion  and  one  language. 
He  is  not  thinking  of  cities  like  our  American  cities, 
which  have  in  some  quarters  vast  colonies  of  Roman 
Catholics  of  various  races  and  tongues,  and  other  colonies 
of  Jews,  distinct  by  race  and  religion  from  the  Protestant 
Christians,  who,  themselves,  are  divided  into  many  sects, 
and  these  not  always  ready  to  co-operate  or  to  treat  each 

134 


ON   CHUKCH    PATKONAGE  135 

other  with  cordial  sympathy  in  labors  for  a  common 
end.  But  even  under  our  greatly  different  conditions, 
some  of  Chalmers'  suggestions  are  of  high  value  and 
permanent  application.  The  conflict  between  the  polit- 
ical authorities  and  the  earnest  element  in  the  State 
Church  is  very  apparent  in  this  chapter,  and  we  can 
already  see  the  plain  signs  of  that  struggle  which  finally 
led  Chalmers,  with  great  pain  and  sorrow,  to  lead  a  party 
out  of  the  Establishment  in  order  to  escape  from  the 
control  and  patronage  of  men  who  had  no  sympathy  with 
an  aggressive  and  devoted  kind  of  Christianity,  such  as 
he  believed  in.] 

Instead  of  a  respectful  deference  to  the  popular  opin- 
ion, there  is  often  a  haughty,  intolerant,  and  avowed 
defiance  to  it,  and  we  then  see  the  longings  of  the  public 
sorely  thwarted  by  the  resolute  and  impregnable  deter- 
mination of  the  patron.  It  may  easily  be  conceived, 
therefore,  how  wide  the  disruption  is  between  the  rul- 
ing and  the  subject  party  when  a  spirit  altogether  ad- 
verse to  the  prevailing  taste  is  seen  to  preside  over  the 
great  bulk  of  our  ecclesiastical  nominations.  If  power 
and  popularity  shall  ever  stand  in  hostile  array  against 
each  other,  we  are  not  to  wonder  though  the  result  should 
be  a  church  on  the  one  hand,  frowning  aloof  in  all  the 
pride  and  distance  of  hierarchy  upon  our  population,  and 
a  people  on  the  other,  revolted  into  utter  distaste  for 
establishments,  and  mingling  with  this  a  very  general 
alienation  of  heart  from  all  that  carries  the  stamp  of 
authority  in  the  land. 

We  should  like,  even  for  the  cause  of  public  tran- 
quillity and  good  order,  that  there  were  a  more  respect- 


136  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

ful  accommodation  to  the  popular  taste  in  Christianity 
than  the  dominant  spirit  of  ecclesiastical  patronage  in 
our  day  is  disposed  to  render  it.  We  conceive  the  two 
main  ingredients  of  this  taste  to  be,  in  the  first  place, 
that  esteem  which  is  felt  by  human  nature  for  what  is 
believed  to  be  religious  honesty;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
the  appetite  of  human  nature,  when  made  in  any  degree 
alive  to  a  sense  of  its  spiritual  wants,  for  that  true  and 
Scriptural  ministration  which  alone  can  relieve  them. 

[The  author  thinks  that  the  civil  rulers  have  been  mis- 
led and  misinformed  by  a  certain  party  of  ecclesiastics 
whose  theological  views  are  out  of  sympathy  with  those 
of  the  people.  In  consequence  of  the  appointments 
made  under  this  influence  the  people  have  deserted  the 
churches,  refused  to  listen  to  the  preachers  set  over  them, 
and  have  become  all  the  more  irritated  against  the  gov- 
ernment itself  because  it  sets  their  tastes  and  preferences 
at  scorn.  This  is  a  serious  cause  of  peril  to  the  common- 
wealth and  to  social  security  and  order. 

An  objection  to  the  popular  selection  of  pastors  is 
made  on  the  ground  of  their  occasional  apparent  prefer- 
ence of  preachers  who  delight  them  with  fantastic  and 
trifling  conceits,  and  who  measure  the  sermons  and  ser- 
vices by  their  length  and  loudness.  The  author  thinks 
that  these  vagaries  of  the  people  are  upon  the  surface 
and  easily  corrected  by  independent  and  earnest  men. 
The  popular  taste  is  not  a  mere  fantastic  relish,  but  a 
"  deep  and  strong  aspiration  of  conscious  humanity,  feel- 
ing, and  most  intelligently  feeling,  what  the  truths  and 
who  the  teachers  are  that  are  most  fitted  to  exalt  and 
moralize  her."  Chalmers  shows,  though  with  some  false 
notes,  a  genuine  respect  for  democracy  and  a  hope  of  its 
future,  akin  to  that  of  Lincoln. 


137 

A  second  objection  against  the  popular  selection  of 
ministers  is  noticed:  that  the  doctrine  which  they  like 
to  hear  is  immoral  in  its  theory  and  tendencies.  There 
were  many  in  places  of  authority  who  believed  that  the 
"  evangelical  "  doctrines  which  were  the  fire  of  Chal- 
mers' eloquence  tended  to  undermine  morality.  The 
message  which  went  to  the  heart  of  the  poor  was  that 
all  men  are  sinners  alike  before  the  perfect  God;  that 
all  alike  must  repent  of  sin ;  that  all  alike  must  be  saved 
by  a  pure  act  of  grace.  Many  think  that  this  obliterates 
distinctions  of  character  and  leads  to  disregard  for  the 
value  of  character.  Chalmers  answers  these  objections 
by  showing  the  relation  between  the  doctrine  of  free 
grace  and  a  holy  life.  ] 

The  gospel  maintains  a  most  entire  consistency  with 
itself.  It  unfolds  that  provision  by  which  atonement 
has  been  made  for  the  guilt  of  sin,  but  it  never  ceases 
announcing  as  its  ulterior  object  to  exterminate  the  be- 
ing of  sin  from  the  heart  and  the  practice  of  all  its  dis- 
ciples. Its  office  is  not  merely  to  reconcile  the  world, 
but  to  regenerate  the  world;  and  there  is  not  an  honest 
believer  who  rejoices  in  pardon  and  does  not,  at  the  same 
time,  aspire  after  moral  excellence;  knowing  that  to 
prosecute  a  strenuous  departure  from  all  iniquity  is  his 
expressly  assigned  vocation,  and  that  he  who,  from  Christ 
as  a  redeemer,  has  obtained  deliverance  from  the  pun- 
ishment of  sin,  must,  under  him  as  a  captain,  hold  an 
unsparing  war  with  the  power  and  the  existence  of  it. 
The  gate  of  reconciliation,  through  the  blood  of  Christ, 
is  not  merely  the  gate  of  escape  from  a  region  of  wrath, 
it  is  the  gate  of  introduction  to  a  field  of  progressive  and 


138  CHEISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

aspiring  virtue;  and  it  is  the  growth  of  this  virtue  upon 
earth  which  constitutes  its  full  and  its  finished  beati- 
tude. .  .  .  And,  as  if  to  shut  out  all  possibility  of 
escape  from  the  toils  and  the  employments  of  virtue, 
does  it  make  known  a  day  of  judgment,  wherein  man 
will  be  reckoned  with,  not  for  his  dogmata,  but  for  his 
doings;  and  when  there  will  be  no  other  estimate  of  his 
principles  than  the  impulse  which  they  gave  to  his  prac- 
tical history  in  the  world — they  who  have  done  good 
being  called  forth  to  the  resurrection  of  the  just,  and 
•they  who  have  done  evil  unto  the  resurrection  of  dam- 
nation. 

The  integrity  of  such  a  creed  is  the  best  guarantee 
for  the  integrity  of  his  relative  and  social  conduct.  And 
it  is  only  in  proportion  to  the  prevalence  of  this  derided 
orthodoxy  that  the  honesties  and  sobrieties  of  life  will 
spread  in  healthful  diffusion  over  the  face  of  the  coun- 
try. That  system  of  doctrine  which  is  stigmatized  as 
methodism,  and  against  which  government  are  led  to 
array  the  whole  force  of  their  overwhelming  patronage; 
and  on  the  approaches  of  which  ecclesiastics  are  often 
seen  to  combine  as  they  would  against  the  inroads  of 
some  pestilential  visitor;  and  which,  when  it  does  ap- 
pear within  the  well-smoothed  garden  of  the  Establish- 
ment, is  viewed  as  a  loathsome  weed  that  should  be  cast 
out  and  left  to  luxuriate  in  its  rankness,  among  the  wilds 
and  the  commons  of  sectarianism — what  a  quantity  of 
undesigned  outrage  must  be  inflicted  every  year  on  the 
best  objects,  both  of  principle  and  of  patriotism,  should 
this,  indeed,  be  the  alone  system  that  has  the  truth  of 


ON   CHURCH    PATRONAGE  139 

heaven  impressed  upon  it,  and  the  alone  system  that  can 
transform  and  moralize  the  families  of  our  land! 

If,  then,  evangelical  Christianity  be  popular  Christi- 
anity; if  its  lessons  are  ever  sure  to  have  the  most  at- 
tractive influence  upon  the  multitude;  if,  whatever  the 
explanation  of  the  fact  may  be,  the  fact  itself  is  unde- 
niable, that  the  doctrine  of  our  first  Reformers,  consist- 
ing mainly  of  justification  by  faith  and  sanctification 
through  the  Spirit  of  God,  is  the  doctrine  which  draws 
the  most  crowded  audiences  around  our  pulpits;  and 
this  doctrine  is,  at  the  same  time,  the  most  powerful 
moralizing  agent  that  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  them, 
then  does  it  follow  that  the  voice  of  the  people  indicates 
most  clearly,  in  this  matter,  what  is  best  for  the  virtue 
of  the  people;  that  the  popular  taste  is  the  organ  by 
which  conscious  humanity  expresses  what  that  is  which 
is  best  fitted  both  to  exalt  and  console  her;  and  that, 
by  the  neglect  and  the  defiance  which  are  so  wantonly 
rendered  to  its  intimations,  are  our  statesmen  withhold- 
ing the  best  aliment  of  a  people's  worth,  and  therefore 
the  best  specific  for  a  nation's  welfare. 

But  we  now  proceed  to  the  third  great  prejudice  which 
requires  to  be  combated.  In  the  mind  of  many  of  our 
politicians  there  is  a  conceived  alliance  between  the  fer- 
vor of  the  popular  demand  for  that  religion  which  is 
most  palatable  and  the  fervor  of  the  popular  demand 
for  those  rights  which  form  the  great  topic  of  disaffec- 
tion and  complaint  among  the  restless  spirits  of  our 
community.  .  .  . 


140  CHKISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

[This  view,  the  author  thinks,  rests  on  a  misconcep- 
tion and  misrepresentation  of  the  spirit  of  the  evangelical 
people.  One  may  think  that  entire  contentment  with  in- 
dustrial conditions  is  not  altogether  so  admirable  as  Dr. 
Chalmers  supposed.  In  the  next  lines  he  seems  to  touch 
another  false  note:] 

But  there  are  other  causes  for  the  delusion  that  we 
are  now  attempting  to  expose;  and,  perhaps,  the  most 
powerful  of  them  is  that  insignificance  in  which  a  spir- 
itual and  devoted  adherent  of  the  evangelical  system  will 
generally  hold  all  the  common  objects  of  partisanship. 
He  cannot,  with  a  heart  preoccupied  by  eternal  things, 
let  himself  down  to  a  keen  interest  in  the  rivalry  of 
this  world's  politics.  Like  a  man  intent  on  the  prosecu- 
tion of  a  journey,  and  with  a  mind  absorbed  by  the  ob- 
jects of  it,  he  cannot  mingle  any  great  earnestness  or 
intensity  of  feeling  with  the  disputes  of  his  fellow-trav- 
ellers, and  especially  if  they  relate  to  matters  connected 
with  the  mere  comfort  and  accommodation  of  the  few 
days  in  which  they  are  to  keep  together. 

[Thus  the  most  worldly  and  self -seeking  ministers,  de- 
voted to  the  interests  of  some  State  party,  and  least  faith- 
ful in  the  discharge  of  parish  duties,  may  be  precisely 
those  who  are  promoted  in  the  State  Church  by  the 
leaders  of  politics.  1 

The  minister  who  had  earned  the  confidence  of  his 
people  by  urging  the  faithful  exposition  of  all  Scripture 
upon  them,  stands  on  a  high  and  secure  vantage  ground 
when,  out  of  that  indelible  record,  he  bids  them  honor 


ON   CHUECH    PATRONAGE  141 

the  king,  and  obey  magistrates,  and  meddle  not  with 
those  who  are  given  to  change,  and  lead  a  quiet  and 
peaceful  life,  in  all  godliness  and  honesty.  These  ac- 
cents would  fall  utterly  powerless  from  the  lips  of  one 
who,  on  an  arena  of  partisanship,  had  manifested  the 
heat  or  the  worldliness  of  a  mere  political  clergyman. 
But  they  would  carry  another  influence  along  with  them 
when  recognized  as  the  effusions  of  the  same  honest  prin- 
ciple which  took  the  whole  round  of  Scripture  and 
brought  forth  of  its  treasury  all  the  truths  and  lessons 
that  are  to  be  found  in  it.  .  .  .  A  church  tilled 
with  the  zealous  friends  and  retainers  of  one  leading 
political  interest  can  have  no  authority  over  a  popula- 
tion whom  the  very  character  of  its  priesthood  has  alien- 
ated from  its  services.  A  church  teeming  with  zealous, 
and  holy,  and  well-principled  evangelists,  that  has  drawn 
largely  of  its  hearers  from  the  multitude,  and  won  largely 
on  their  veneration  and  regard,  such  a  church,  without 
one  offering  at  the  shrine  of  any  party  whatever,  but 
mixing  her  lessons  of  loyalty  with  all  the  other  lessons 
of  the  Christian  law,  will  be  found,  in  the  fiercest  day 
of  a  nation's  trial,  to  be  its  best  and  surest  palladium. 

But  the  partisanship  of  clergymen  is  just  as  hurtful 
on  the  one  side  of  politics  as  the  other.  The  spirit  of 
their  office  should  raise  them  above  this  arena  altogether 
and  lead  them  to  refrain  from  taking  any  share  in  the 
contest  at  all.  We  believe  that  the  fancied  alliance  be- 
tween the  party  of  Whiggism  in  the  State  and  the  Evan- 
gelical party  in  the  Church  has  tended,  in  Scotland,  to 
the  discouragement  and  depression  of  the  best  of  causes. 


142  CHRISTIAN   AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

It  has  helped  to  direct  the  whole  power  and  patronage 
of  government  against  the  more  acceptable  clergy  of  our 
land,  and  so  multiplied  the  topics  of  heartburning  and 
irritation  between  the  people  and  their  rulers..  A  few 
political  clergy  standing  prominently  forth,  on  either 
side  of  the  Church,  will  suffice  to  fasten  a  political  im- 
putation on  the  whole  body  that  is  represented  by  them. 
A  priesthood  strictly  devoted  to  their  own  pro- 
fessional objects,  and  keeping  aloof  from  the  contest  of 
this  world's  politics,  and  neither  servile  in  their  loyalty 
nor  boisterous  in  their  independence,  and  ardently  prose- 
cuting the  literature  of  their  order  or  the  labor  of  love 
in  their  parishes,  the  intent  and  engrossing  aim  of  such 
a  priesthood  is  to  rear  a  generation  for  eternity.  But 
still  the  blessings  which  they  would  scatter  along  the 
path  of  time  are  also  incalculable.  The  promise  of  the 
life  that  now  is,  as  well  as  of  the  life  that  is  to  come,  is 
attendant  upon  all  their  exertions. 


CHAPTER  VI 

ON  CHURCH  PATRONAGE,   CONTINUED 

[DR.  CHALMERS  alludes  to  the  English  Established 
Church  and  the  effort  of  statesmen  and  prelates  to  sup- 
press evangelical  fervor,  which  they  called  "  method- 
ism,"  and  which  our  author  regards  as  essential  to  the 
popularity  and  social  usefulness  of  the  legal  Church.  He 
insists  that  lawlessness  is  the  result  of  popular  infidelity, 
not  of  evangelical  zeal;  and  that  the  exclusion  of  the 
people  from  all  voice  in  the  selection  of  their  pastors 
tends  to  alienate  them  still  further  from  both  religion 
and  government.  Under  this  undemocratic  policy  he 
fears  that  "  the  alienation  of  the  people  will  widen  every 
year  from  the  bosom  of  the  Establishment;  and  the 
Establishment,  reft  of  all  spiritual  virtue,  will  at  length 
be  reduced  to  a  splendid  impotency  of  noble  edifices,  and 
highly  gifted  endowments,  and  stately  imposing  cere- 
monial. .  .  ." 

He  reminds  the  reader  that  in  Scotland  the  ecclesias- 
tical authorities  have  the  power  to  prevent  the  active 
ministrations  of  a  pastor  nominated  by  a  patron  if  he 
seems  to  them  on  any  ground  unsuitable.  If  in  the  past 
the  Scotch  Church  has  yielded  to  the  demands  of  patrons 
and  surrendered  her  privileges,  it  still  has  the  legal  right 
to  assert  its  veto  power  and  secure  suitable  appointments.] 

It  is  on  these  principles  that  there  are  not  a  few  of  the 
clergy  who  cleave  to  the  Establishment,  in  spite  of  all 

143 


144  CHK1STIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  partial  corruptions  that  sectarianism  has  alleged 
against  her.  They  see  in  the  bosom  of  their  own  Church 
an  open  avenue  to  every  desirable  reformation.  They 
honestly  believe  that  there  is  not  a  better  range  of  Chris- 
tian usefulness  to  be  found  over  the  whole  face  of  the 
country  than  within  her  walls;  and  that  a  man  of  prin- 
ciple and  zeal,  when  backed  by  the  independence  which 
she  confers,  and  shielded  about  by  the  amplitude  of  her 
securities  and  her  power,  stands  on  the  highest  of  all 
vantage  ground  for  the  work  of  honest  and  faithful 
ministrations.  They  trust  that  she  is  the  destined  instru- 
ment for  the  preservation  and  the  revival  of  Christianity 
in  our  land,  and  would  tremble  for  her  overthrow  as  the 
severest  blow  that,  in  this  quarter  of  the  island,  could 
be  inflicted  on  the  cause  of  the  gospel.  .  . 

With  the  great  majority  of  dissenters  the  appoint- 
ment of  ministers  is  by  popular  election.  The  right  of 
suffrage  is  more  or  less  extended,  however,  being  some- 
times vested  in  the  sitters  of  a  congregation,  at  other 
times  restricted  to  the  members  of  it  or  those  who  have 
been  admitted  to  the  ordinances,  and,  in  no  small  num- 
ber of  instances,  being  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  pro- 
prietors, or  trustees,  who  own  the  chapel  and  bind  them- 
selves to  defray,  from  the  proceeds  of  it,  all  the  expenses 
of  the  concern.  We  do  not  hold  the  last  of  these  ar- 
rangements to  be  different,  in  point  of  effect,  from  either 
of  the  two  former.  It  affords,  no  doubt,  the  example 
of  a  patronage  shared  among  so  many  individuals,  but 
still  of  a  patronage  controlled  by  the  hearers  and  in  a 
state  of  dependence  on  the  popular  will.  It  is  the  ob- 


ON   CHURCH    PATRONAGE  145 

vious  and  direct  interest  of  the  electors  to  fix  on  the 
man  who,  by  his  talents  and  doctrine,  shall  secure  a  full 
attendance  upon  his  ministrations,  and  so  secure,  at  least, 
a  sufficient  rental  for  meeting  all  the  engagements.  This 
state  of  things  is  tantamount  to  a  right  of  patronage 
vested  in  a  few,  with  the  power  of  veto  on  each  nomina- 
tion vested  in  the  many,  a  power  which  will  be  exercised 
on  each  successive  appointment,  till  that  one  individual 
is  brought  forward  in  whom  the  patronage  and  the  popu- 
larity come  to  an  adjustment  with  each  other.  .  .  . 

After  all,  it  must  often  happen  that,  even  under  the 
most  democratic  economy  of  a  congregation,  the  min- 
ister virtually  obtains  his  office  by  the  appointment  of 
a  few,  and  only  with  the  acquiescence  of  the  many.  In 
every  assemblage  of  human  beings  this  is  the  method 
by  which  all  their  proceedings  are  really  carried  for- 
ward. The  ascendency  of  worth,  or  talent,  or  station, 
or  some  other  natural  influence,  is  ever  sure  to  vest  the 
power  of  originating  in  the  few,  and  to  leave  nothing 
with  the  many  but  the  power  of  a  veto;  nay,  even,  in 
many  instances,  to  disarm  them  of  that  power.  The  work 
of  choosing  their  minister  in  a  dissenting  congregation 
is,  we  doubt  not,  in  the  great  majority  of  instances,  most 
wisely  and  most  peaceably  conducted.  But,  on  looking 
to  principles  as  well  as  to  forms,  we  have  as  little  doubt 
that,  in  very  many  instances,  the  appointment  is  the 
result  of  a  harmonized  meeting  between  what  may  be 
called  a  virtual  deed  of  patronage,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  power  of  a  negative  on  the  other.  .  .  . 

10 


146  CHKISTIAN    AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

[The  author  argues  that  the  patronage  of  a  State 
Church  may  be  so  regulated  that  it  will  be  a  source  of 
good.  At  the  same  time  he  insists  that  dissenters  should 
be  treated  with  kindness  and  be  left  free  to  compete 
with  the  Establishment  in  a  fair  and  earnest  rivalry  of 
good  works.  When  all  have  done  their  utmost,  multi- 
tudes will  still  be  neglectful  and  neglected.  The  argu- 
ment for  toleration  of  dissent  was  made  long  before 
Chalmers  left  the  Establishment,  and  one  can  see  how 
his  mind  was  being  prepared,  unconsciously,  for  a  radi- 
cal step  which  was  taken  years  later.  In  reality  he  was 
making  a  plea  for  that  dissenting  party  which  he  did 
not  yet  foresee,  and  of  which  he  was  to  be  the  leader. 
The  evils  of  patronage  finally  came  to  appear  to  him 
incurable  and  intolerable,  and  he  went  out  from  under 
its  yoke. 

Urging  again  the  principle  of  locality  and  of  a  resi- 
dent minister  for  each  parish,  in  terms  which  reveal  the 
very  roots  of  the  "  Social  Settlement "  idea,  the  author 
pleads  for  an  adequate  supply  of  houses  of  worship  for 
the  neglected  population  of  cities,  rapidly  becoming 
alienated  from  religion,  morality,  and  good  order.  He 
asserts  that  of  all  those  who  had  been  charged  with  riot 
and  sedition  not  one  had  been  found  to  be  a  member  of 
the  dissenting  churches.] 

The  best  arrangement  for  a  town  that  has  only  ten 
churches,  and  would  need  thirty,  is,  in  supplementing 
the  deficiency,  to  descend  from  spires  to  belfries;  and, 
besides  observing  the  utmost  simplicity  in  the  buildings, 
to  assign  such  an  income  to  the  clergyman  as  that  the 
whole  expenses,  both  of  the  erection  and  endowment, 
may,  as  nearly  as  possible,  be  met  by  the  proceeds  of 
attendance.  This  would  give  confidence,  and  call  forth 


ON   CHURCH    1'ATRONAGE  147 

a  much  more  productive  effort,  in  the  way  of  private 
subscription  for  the  cause,  or  even  enable  magistrates 
to  take  the  cause  into  their  own  hands.  But,  in  every 
possible  way,  it  is  a  cause  which  ought  to  be  carried 
forward;  and  those  are  the  most  patriotic  and  enlight- 
ened rulers  who,  laying  aside  the  prejudices  which  have 
hitherto  kept  popularity  and  patronage  at  so  heartless 
a  distance  from  each  other,  shall  now  give  their  prompti- 
tude to  the  great  object  of  so  multiplying  churches  as 
to  meet  the  necessities  of  the  people,  and  of  so  appoint- 
ing churches  as  to  draw  them  to  a  willing  attendance 
on  the  ministrations  of  Christianity. 


CHAPTEE  VII 

ON   CHURCH  OFFICES 

BY  the  constitution  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  it  is 
provided  that  in  each  parish  there  shall  be  at  least  one 
minister  whose  office  it  is  to  preach  and  dispense  the 
ordinances  of  Christianity  on  the  Sabbath,  and  to  labor 
in  holy  things  among  the  people  through  the  week ;  and 
elders,  whose  office  it  is  to  assist  at  the  dispensation  of 
sacraments,  to  be  the  bearers  of  religious  advice  and 
comfort  among  the  families,  and,  in  general,  to  act  as 
purely  ecclesiastical  laborers  for  the  good  of  human 
souls;  and,  lastly,  deacons,  to  whom  it  belongs,  not  to 
preach  the  word  or  administer  the  sacraments,  but  to 
take  special  care  in  administering  to  the  necessities  of 
the  poor.  In  the  course  of  time  the  last  of  these  three 
offices  has  fallen  into  very  general  desuetude.  The  duties 
of  it  have  been  transferred  to  the  eldership,  the  members 
of  which  body  have  thus  been  vested  with  a  plurality 
of  cares,  it  being  both  their  part  to  labor  in  matters 
connected  with  the  religious  good  of  the  people  and  to 
share  in  the  administration  of  those  funds  which  the  law 
or  custom  of  the  country  has  provided  for  meeting  the 
demands  of  its  pauperism. 

In  the  great  majority  of  our  Scottish  parishes  the  sum 
148 


ON    CHURCH    OFFICES  149 

expended  on  pauperism  is  raised  by  voluntary  collection, 
and  still  maintains  the  character  of  a  ministration  of 
kindness.  It  is  so  very  small  in  amount  as  not  to  have 
come  very  sensibly  or  extensively  into  contact  with  the 
lower  orders  of  society,  who,  in  those  parts  of  the  coun- 
try where  the  method  of  legal  assessments  for  the  poor 
has  not  been  established,  still  retain  the  veteran  hardi- 
hood and  independence  of  their  forefathers,  and  among 
whom  the  condition  of  known  and  public  dependence  is 
still  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  family  misfortune  or  a 
family  degradation. 

[The  case  of  the  elder  who  acts  as  deacon  of  poor 
funds  is  considered.  The  custom  of  raising  this  fund 
by  taxation  was  growing  in  Scotland,  and  Chalmers  re- 
garded this  tendency  with  dread.  He  felt  that  it  would 
degrade  the  poor  and  increase  class  hostility  by  chang- 
ing relief  from  private  generosity  to  public  and  legal 
compulsion.] 

He  goes  forth  among  them  as  an  elder  when  he  goes 
forth  to  pray  with  them,  or  to  address  them  on  the  sub- 
ject of  Christianity,  or  to  recommend  their  attention  to 
its  ordinances,  or  to  take  cognizance  of  the  education  of 
their  children.  There  are  indeed  a  thousand  expedients 
by  which  he  may  attempt  a  religious  influence  among 
the  people,  and,  in  plying  these  expedients,  he  acts  purely 
as  an  ecclesiastical  laborer.  And,  did  he  act  singly  in 
this  capacity,  we  might  know  what  to  make  of  the  wel- 
come which  he  obtains  from  the  families.  But  they 
recognize  him  to  be  also  a  dispenser  of  temporalities; 


150  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

and  they  have  an  indefinite  imagination  of  his  powers, 
and  of  his  patronage,  and  of  his  funds;  and  their  sordid 
or  mercenary  expectations  are  set  at  work  by  the  very 
sight  of  him;  and  thus  some  paltry  or  interested  desire 
of  their  own  may  lurk  under  the  whole  of  that  apparent 
cordiality  which  marks  the  intercourse  of  the  two  parties. 
It  were  a  great  satisfaction  to  disentangle  one  principle 
here  from  another,  and  this  can  only  be  done  by  sepa- 
rating the  one  office  from  the  other.  It  were  desirable 
to  ascertain  how  much  of  liking  there  is  for  the  Chris- 
tian and  how  much  for  the  pecuniary  ministration  with 
which  this  philanthropist  is  charged.  The  union  of  these 
two  throws  an  impenetrable  obscurity  over  this  question 
and  raises  a  barrier  against  the  discernment  of  real  char- 
acter among  the  people  with  whom  we  deal. 

But  this  combination  does  more  than  disguise  the 
principles  of  the  people.  It  serves  also  to  deteriorate 
them.  If  there  be  any  nascent  affection  among  them 
toward  that  which  is  sacred  it  is  well  to  keep  it  single, 
to  defend  it  from  the  touch  of  every  polluting  ingredient, 
and  most  strenuously  to  beware  of  holding  out  encour- 
agement to  that  most  subtle  of  all  hypocrisies,  the 
hypocrisy  of  the  heart;  which  is  most  surely  and  most 
effectually  done  when  the  lessons  of  preparations  for  an- 
other world  are  mixed  up  with  the  bribery  of  certain 
advantages  in  this  world.  .  .  .  Simplicity  of  desire, 
or  the  want  of  it,  makes  the  whole  difference  between 
being  full  of  light  and  full  of  darkness.  It  is  thus  that 
Christ  refuses  to  be  a  judge  and  a  divider;  and  that  the 
apostles  totally  resign  the  office  of  ministering  to  the 


ON    CHURCH    OFFICES  151 

temporal  wants  of  the  poor;  and  that  Paul,  in  particular, 
is  at  so  much  pains  both  to  teach  and  to  exemplify  among 
his  disciples  the  habit  of  independence  on  charity  to  the 
very  uttermost,  denouncing  the  hypocrisy  of  those  who 
make  gain  of  godliness,  and  even  going  so  far  as  to 
affirm  that  the  man  who  had  joined  their  society  with 
a  view  to  his  own  personal  relief,  out  of  its  funds,  from 
the  expense  of  maintaining  his  own  household,  was  worse 
than  an  infidel.  .  . 

[The  elder  who  earnestly  seeks  to  perform  both  of- 
fices, spiritual  and  temporal,  is  in  a  trying  position.] 

What  a  bounty  he  carries  around  with  him  on  the 
worst  kind  of  dissimulation.  Like  a  substance  where 
neither  of  the  ingredients  taken  singly  is  poisonous,  and 
which  assumes  all  its  virulence  from  the  composition  of 
them,  what  a  power  of  insidious  but  most  fatal  corrup- 
tion lies  in  the  mere  junction  of  these  two  offices !  .  .  . 
What  a  mortifying  indifference  to  the  topic  he  has  most 
at  heart,  under  all  the  constrained  appearance  of  atten- 
tion which  is  rendered  to  it.  With  what  dexterity  can 
the  language  of  sanctity  be  pressed  into  the  service  when 
their  purpose  requires  it,  and  yet  how  evident,  how  mor- 
tifyingly  evident  often,  is  the  total  absence  of  all  feeling 
and  desire  upon  the  subject  from  the  hearts  of  these 
wily  politicians.  .  .  . 

There  may  be  no  great  harm  done  by  putting  this 
administration  into  the  hands  of  an  eldership  so  long 
as  the  money  is  raised  in  the  shape  of  a  free-will  offering 
from  the  giver  .  .  .  or  so  long  as  they  have  to  deal 


152  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

only  with  moderate  sums  among  moderate  expectations. 
But,  when  the  fund  is  raised  in  a  legal  and  compulsory 
way  by  assessment,  and  when  that  which  wont  to  be 
petitioned  for  in  the  shape  of  charity  is  demanded  in  the 
shape  of  justice,  and  when  the  people  are  thus  armed 
with  the  force  and  impetus  of  an  aggressive  legality, 
upon  the  one  side,  and  are  not  met  in  the  firm  and  reso- 
lute spirit  of  a  defensive  legality  upon  the  other,  there 
will  in  time  be  among  us  a  far  more  rapid  acceleration 
of  pauperism  than  ever  has  been  exemplified  in  England. 

[If  a  church  officer,  taking  a  severe  attitude,  refuses 
expected  relief  from  the  tax  fund,  then  he  is  hated  and 
distrusted  by  the  clamorous  poor,  and  his  religious  coun- 
sels are  met  with  bitterness.  The  country  should  return 
to  the  old  method  by  which  relief  came  from  voluntary 
offerings.] 

But  should  this  plan  be  adopted  it  were  greatly  better 
that  the  Church  should  be  altogether  dissevered  from 
the  ministrations  of  public  charity.  We  shall  never  cease 
to  regret  the  introduction  of  a  legal  spirit  into  the  work 
of  human  benevolence,  and  to  regard  the  establishment 
of  a  compulsory  provision  for  the  poor  as  one  of  the 
worst  invasions  ever  made  on  the  olden  habit  of  our 
country,  and  as  one  of  the  deadliest  obstacles  to  its  moral 
regeneration.  But  if  this  curse  is  to  be  perpetuated  upon 
our  land,  let  elders  and  deacons,  and  all  who  hold  any 
ecclesiastical  character  among  us,  cease  from  this  mo- 
ment to  be  implicated  in  a  business  so  mischievous.  .  .  » 
Nor  let  these  laborers  in  the  cause  of  Scotland's  piety 


ON   CHURCH    OFFICES  153 

and  Scotland's  worth  be  charged  with  any  distribution 
of  a  quality  so  poisonous,  and  at  the  same  time  so  allur- 
ing, that  they  can  neither  withhold  it  without  alienating 
many  hearts  from  them  nor  spread  it  freely  around  with- 
out insinuating  corruption  into  these  hearts  and  scatter- 
ing the  seeds  of  a  great  and  pernicious  distemper  over 
the  land.  .  .  . 

There  is  a  delusive  fear  to  which  inexperience  is  liable 
upon  this  subject,  as  if  there  were  a  very  general  rapac- 
ity among  the  families  of  the  poor,  which,  if  not  ap- 
peased out  of  the  capabilities  of  the  public  fund,  would 
render  it  altogether  unsafe  for  any  private  individual  in 
the  upper  walks  of  society  to  move  at  large  among  their 
habitations.  .  .  . 

The  truth  is  that  there  is  a  far  greater  sufficiency 
among  the  lower  classes  of  society  than  is  generally 
imagined;  and  our  first  impressions  of  their  want  and 
wretchedness  are  generally  by  much  too  aggravated,  nor 
do  we  know  a  more  effectual  method  of  reducing  these 
impressions  than  to  cultivate  a  closer  acquaintance  with 
their  resources  and  their  habits  and  their  whole  domestic 
economy.  It  is  certainly  in  the  power  of  artificial  ex- 
pedients to  create  artificial  desires,  and  to  call  out  a  host 
of  applications  that  would  never  have  otherwise  been 
made.  And  we  know  of  nothing  which  leads  more  di- 
rectly and  more  surely  to  this  state  of  things  than  a 
great  regular  provision  for  indigence,  obtruded  with  all 
the  characters  of  legality  and  certainty  and  abundance 
upon  the  notice  of  the  people.  But  wherever  the  se- 
curities which  nature  hath  established  for  the  relief  and 


154  CHEISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

mitigation  of  extreme  distress  are  not  so  tampered  with, 
where  the  economy  of  individuals,  and  the  sympathy  of 
neighbors,  and  a  sense  of  the  relative  duties  among  kins- 
folk are  left,  without  disturbance,  to  their  own  silent 
and  simple  operation — it  will  be  found  that  there  is  noth- 
ing so  formidable  in  the  work  of  traversing  a  whole  mass 
of  congregated  beings,  and  of  encountering  all  the 
clamors,  whether  of  real  or  fictitious  necessity,  that  may 
be  raised  by  our  appearance  among  them.  .  .  .  We 
know  not,  indeed,  how  one  can  be  made  more  effectually 
to  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  superfluousness  of  all  public 
and  legalized  charity  than  just  to  assume  a  district  and 
become  the  familiar  friend  of  the  people  who  live  in  it, 
and  to  do  for  them  the  thousand  nameless  offices  of  Chris- 
tian regard,  and  to  encourage,  in  every  judicious  and 
inoffensive  way,  their  dependence  upon  themselves  and 
their  fellow-feeling  for  one  another.  Such  a  process  of 
daily  observation  as  this  will  do  more  than  all  political 
theory  can  do  to  convince  him  with  what  safety  the  sub- 
sistence of  a  people  may  be  left  to  their  own  capabilities, 
and  how  the  modern  pauperism  of  our  days  is  a  super- 
structure altogether  raised  on  the  basis  of  imposture  and 
worthlessness — a  basis  which  the  very  weight  of  the 
superstructure  is  fitted  to  consolidate  and  to  extend. 

It  is  not  the  materiel  of  benevolence  given  to  those 
few  of  his  families  who  may  require  it  that  will  bind  to 
him  the  population  he  has  assumed.  This  may  be  neces- 
sary to  indicate  the  honesty  of  his  principles.  But  it  is 
the  morale  of  benevolence,  it  is  the  unbounded  and  uni- 
versal spirit  of  kindness  felt  by  him  for  all  the  families, 


ON    CHURCH    OFFICES  155 

and  expressing  itself  in  numberless  other  ways  besides 
the  giving  of  alms — it  is  this  which  will  raise  him  to  his 
chief  and  useful  ascendency  over  them.  It  is  seldom 
adverted  to  how  much  a  simple  affection,  if  it  be  but 
authentically  manifested  in  any  one  way,  is  fitted  to 
call  forth  affection  back  again.  It  is  little  known  how 
open  even  the  rudest  and  wildest  of  a  city  population 
are  to  the  magic  of  this  sweetening  influence.  There  is 
here  one  precious  department  of  our  nature  which  seems 
not  to  have  been  so  overspread  as  the  rest  of  it  by  the 
ruins  of  the  fall.  Perhaps  vanity  and  selfishness  may 
enter  as  elements  into  the  effect;  but  certain  it  is  that 
if  one  human  being  see  in  the  heart  of  another  a  good- 
will toward  himself,  he  is  not  able,  and  far  less  is  he 
willing,  to  stifle  or  to  withhold  the  reciprocal  good-will 
that  he  feels  to  arise  in  his  own  bosom.  This  is  a  phe- 
nomenon of  our  nature  which  the  hardy  administrators 
of  a  poor's  house  have  little  conception  of;  and  they 
may  be  heard  to  predict  that  if  you  disjoin  an  elder  from 
all  the  patronage  which  he  shares  with  them  you  take 
away  from  him  the  only  instrument  by  which  he  can 
ever  hope  to  conciliate  his  families.  .  .  .  The  hos- 
tility of  the  people,  or  the  hypocrisy  of  the  people,  may 
be  abundantly  nourished  out  of  the  elements  of  the  pres- 
ent system,  but  it  is  by  the  play  of  finer  elements  alto- 
gether that  the  hearts  of  the  people  are  to  be  won.  We 
are  quite  aware  of  the  incredulity  of  practical  men  upon 
this  subject;  but  it  is  just  because  they  are  not  practical 
enough  that  they  are  blind  to  the  truth  and  cannot  per- 
ceive it. 


156  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

This  is  a  question  which  it  is  better  to  try  than  to 
argue.  And  yet  it  ought  to  be  a  palpable  thing,  even 
with  our  most  every-day  observers,  that  humanity  is  so 
constituted  as  to  derive  a  sensation  of  pleasure  from  an- 
other's love  as  well  as  from  the  fruit  of  another's  liber- 
ality. .  .  .  This  is  a  world  which,  gross  and  sensual 
as  the  general  nature  of  its  inhabitants  may  be,  and 
keenly  directed  as  their  appetites  are  toward  silver  and 
gold,  or  such  materials  of  enjoyment  as  these  can  pro- 
duce, it  is  still  a  world  where,  through  all  its  generations, 
the  charm  even  of  simple  kindness  is  not  unfelt,  even 
when  it  has  nothing  to  bestow;  .  .  .  it  is  a  world 
where  we  affirm  that  good-will,  though  unaccompanied 
with  wealth,  can  spread  a  higher  and  more  permanent 
felicity,  even  among  its  poorer  vicinities,  than  ever 
wealth  can,  in  all  its  profusion,  unaccompanied  with 
good-will.  .  .  . 

The  man  who  has  nothing  to  give  but  the  expression 
of  his  friendly  regard  may,  in  fact,  be  dealing  out  among 
his  fellows  the  materials  of  real  enjoyment.  It  will  not 
be  difficult  to  convince  of  this  truth  the  members  of  an 
affectionate  family,  in  the  transference  of  whose  kindly 
feelings  from  one  to  another  they  intimately  know,  that 
there  is  a  sensation  far  more  precious  to  the  heart  than 
can  be  wrought  there  by  the  transference  of  gold  or 
silver.  Neither  will  it  be  difficult  to  convince  a  man 
of  ever-flowing  cordiality  in  the  walks  of  social  inter- 
course who,  whether  at  the  festive  board  or  even  in  his 
hurried  passage  through  the  bustle  and  throng  of  a  street 
teeming  with  acquaintances,  is  most  thoroughly  con- 


ON    CHURCH    OFFICES  157 

scious  of  the  pleasure  that  is  both  given  and  received  by 
the  smile  and  the  rapid  inquiry,  and  even  the  most 
slight  and  momentary  token  of  deference  and  good-will. 
Neither  will  it  be  difficult  to  make  the  truth  of  this 
lesson  be  recognized  by  him  who  has  had  frequent  experi- 
ence and  fellowship  among  the  abodes  of  poverty,  and 
who  can  attest  how  pure  and  how  delicious  that  incense 
is  which  arises  from  the  simple  acknowledgments  of 
those  who,  save  their  regard  and  the  expression  of  their 
honest  attachment,  have  positively  nothing  to  bestow. 

And  neither  will  it  be  difficult  to  make  this  whole 
matter  plain  to  the  reflection  of  the  poor  themselves, 
upon  whose  humble  vicinities  the  wealthy  have  seldom 
or  never  entered,  and  who  well  know  that,  within  the 
narrow  compass  of  their  own  intercourse,  a  bright  and 
gladdening  influence  may  be  conveyed  from  one  hum- 
ble tenement  to  another;  and  that  if  the  next-door 
neighbor  bear  an  affection  to  them,  it  throws  a  light 
into  their  bosoms  which  would  not  be  there  if  he  bore 
against  them  a  grudge  or  a  displeasure;  and  that  the 
difference  in  point  of  feeling  between  an  atmosphere  of 
kind  agreement  and  an  atmosphere  of  fierce  and  fiery 
contention  is  just  as  distinct  as  will  be  the  difference 
between  heaven  and  hell;  insomuch  that,  after  all,  it 
is  not  so  much  the  occasional  liberality  of  him  who  makes 
the  transient  visit  and  leaves  behind  him  some  token  of 
his  abundance — it  is  not  this  which  so  cheers  and  al- 
leviates the  lot  of  poverty,  as  that  more  steadfast  and 
habitual  blessedness  which,  by  the  kindness  of  immediate 
neighbors,  may  be  made  to  shine  and  to  settle  around 


158  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

its  habitation.  All  this  is  abundantly  obvious  among 
the  various  conditions  of  society,  in  the  bosoni  of  the 
family,  or  among  the  rich,  as  to  the  sweetness  which 
they  have  themselves  experienced  in  a  simple  offering 
of  affection  from  the  poor;  or,  among  the  poor,  in  all 
that  they  know  and  feel  of  the  relationship  in  which 
they  stand  with  the  members  of  their  own  neighborhood. 
And  the  only  difficulty,  in  completing  this  proof,  which 
we  have  to  contend  with  is  when  we  attempt  to  con- 
vince the  rich  that,  while  it  is  their  duty  to  give  of  their 
gold  and  silver  to  those  who  stand  in  need  of  them,  it  is 
their  kindness  which,  if  actually  perceived  to  be  genuine, 
is  more  valued  and  more  enjoyed  by  the  poor  than  even 
the  fruit  of  their  kindness;  it  is  the  principle  which 
prompted  the  offering  that,  after  all,  affords  a  truer  relish 
of  their  feelings  than  the  offering  itself;  it  is  the  com- 
munity of  hearts  which  raises  and  delights  them  more 
than  even  the  community  of  goods.  If  the  one  be  es- 
tablished between  the  various  classes  of  society  it  will 
no  doubt  bring  the  best  and  fittest  proportion  of  the 
other  along  with  it.  But  the  thing  of  importance  to  be 
remarked  just  now  is  that  nature,  even  when  sunk  in 
abject  poverty,  and,  therefore,  relieved  in  her  more  press- 
ing wants  by  an  act  of  almsgiving,  is  still  more  soothed 
and  conciliated  by  an  exhibition  of  good-will  on  the  part 
of  the  giver  than  by  the  whole  material  product  of  the 
beneficence  that  he  has  rendered;  that  it  is  a  gross,  and 
in  every  way  an  injurious,  misconception  of  the  poor  to 
think  them  beyond  the  reach  of  those  finer  influences 
which  reciprocate  between  pure  sympathy  on  the  one 


ON    CHURCH    OFFICES  159 

hand  and  a  simple  sense  and  observation  of  that  sym- 
pathy on  the  other.  .  .  . 

This  ascendency  of  the  moral  over  the  material  part 
of  our  constitution  is  no  romance  and  no  fabrication  of 
poetry.  It  is  exemplified  every  day  in  the  living  and 
the  ordinary  walk  of  human  experience.  There  is  not 
on  the  face  of  our  world  one  neighborhood  of  contiguous 
families  either  so  poor  or  so  profligate  as  to  withstand 
these  repeated  demonstrations;  and  that  sullenness  of 
character  which  no  bribery  could  reduce,  and  which 
gathers  a  deeper  and  more  determined  gloom  when  the 
hand  of  authority  is  applied  to  it,  has  been  rendered  as 
tractable  as  childhood  under  the  mighty  and  the  magi- 
cal spell  of  a  meek  and  endearing  and  undissembled 
charity. 

The  law  of  reciprocal  attraction  between  one  heart 
and  another  is  a  law  of  nature  as  well  as  of  Christianity, 
insomuch  that  no  sooner  does  the  regard  of  a  philan- 
thropist for  the  people  of  his  district  come  to  be  recog- 
nized than  their  regard  for  him,  and  that,  too,  both  from 
the  converted  and  the  unconverted,  will  attest  of  what 
kind  of  material  humanity  is  formed.  .  .  . 

Let  suspicion  be  but  once  dissipated,  and  the  enmity 
of  nature  be  disarmed  by  the  true  and  touching  demon- 
strations of  a  real  principle  of  kindness,  and  ridicule 
have  ceased  from  its  uproar,  and  contempt  have  dis- 
charged all  its  vociferations,  and  the  man's  worth  and 
benevolence  become  manifest  as  day;  then,  though  the 
ministration  of  gold  and  silver  be  that  which  fortune 
hath  altogether  denied  him,  it  is  both  very  striking  and 


160  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

very  encouraging  to  behold  how,  in  spite  of  themselves, 
he  steals  the  hearts  of  the  people  away  from  them;  how, 
as  if  by  the  operation  of  some  mystic  spell,  the  most 
restless  and  profligate  of  them  all  feel  the  softening  in- 
fluence of  his  presence  and  of  his  doings;  and  how,  in 
the  cheap  and  humble  services  of  tending  their  children, 
and  visiting  their  sick,  and  ministering  in  sacred  exer- 
cises at  the  couch  of  the  dying,  and  filling  up  his  oppor- 
tunities of  intercourse  with  the  utterance  of  holy  advice 
and  the  exhibition  of  holy  example,  there  is,  in  these 
simple  and  unaccompanied  attentions,  a  charm  felt  and 
welcomed,  even  in  the  most  polluted  atmosphere  that 
ever  settled  around  the  most  corrupt  and  crowded  of 
human  habitations. 

This  is  not  credited  by  many  of  our  citizens ;  and  men 
who  deliver  themselves  in  a  tone  of  grave  and  respectable 
and  imposing  experience  may  be  heard  to  affirm,  that, 
unless  an  elder  be  vested  with  a  power  of  administration 
over  the  public  money,  he  will  be  an  unwelcome  visitor 
with  the  general  run  of  families;  that  he  will  meet  with 
few  to  bid  him  God-speed  on  the  single  and  abstract 
errand  of  Christianity;  and  that,  while  the  old  system 
of  payments  without  prayers  was  acceptable  enough,  the 
new  system  of  prayers  without  payments  will  banish  the 
whole  host  of  eldership  in  our  city  from  the  acceptance 
and  good-will  of  its  inhabitants.  Surely  this  is  a  mat- 
ter of  proof  and  not  of  probability;  a  thing  that  may 
be  committed  to  the  decision  of  experience,  instead  of 
being  left  to  the  contentions  of  reason  or  of  sophistry. 

Let  an  elder  count  it  his  duty  to  hold  a  habitual  in- 


ON    CHURCH    OFFICES  101 

tercourse  of  kindness  with  the  people  of  his  district,  and 
for  this  purpose  devote  but  a  few  hours  in  the  week  to 
their  highest  interests;  out  of  the  fulness  of  a  heart  ani- 
mated with  good-will  to  men,  and  in  particular  with 
that  good-will  which  points  to  the  good  of  their  eternity, 
let  him  make  use  of  every  practical  expedient  for  spread- 
ing among  them  the  light  and  influence  of  the  gospel; 
let  it  be  his  constant  aim  to  warn  the  unruly,  to  comfort 
the  afflicted,  to  stimulate  the  education  of  children,  to 
press  the  duty  of  attending  ordinances,  to  make  use  of 
all  his  persuasion  in  private  and  of  all  his  influence  to 
promote  such  public  and  parochial  measures  as  may  for- 
ward the  simple  design  of  making  our  people  good  and 
pious  and  holy — then,  though  he  should  go  forth  among 
them  stripped  of  power  and  patronage  and  pecuniary 
administrations;  though  his  honest  and  Christian  good- 
will be  all  he  has  to  recommend  him;  though  the  various 
secularities  by  which  the  offices  of  our  Church  have  been 
polluted  and  degraded  shall  be  conclusively  done  away, 
and  the  whole  armory  of  our  influence  among  the  peo- 
ple be  reduced  to  the  simple  element  of  good-will,  and 
friendship,  and  personal  labor,  and  unwearied  earnest- 
ness in  the  prosecution  of  their  spiritual  welfare;  yet, 
with  these,  and  these  alone,  will  any  of  our  elders  at 
length  find  a  welcome  in  every  heart  and  a  home  in 
every  habitation.  Others  may  then  take  up  the  minis- 
tration which  he  has  put  away.  But  it  will  be  his  pres- 
ence which  will  awaken  the  finest  glow  of  kindly  and 
reverential  feeling  among  our  population.  Though  out  of 
any  public  treasury  he  neither  has  gold  nor  silver  to  give, 
11 


162  CHKISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

yet  let  him  just  do  with  his  means  and  his  opportunities 
as  every  Christian  should  do,  and  feel  as  every  Chris- 
tian should  feel,  and  he  will  rarely  meet  with  a  family 
so  poor  as  to  undervalue  his  attentions,  or  a  family  so 
profligate  as  to  persist  in  despising  them. 

The  Christian  elder  who  has  resigned  the  temporali- 
ties of  his  office  should  not  think  that,  on  that  account, 
he  has  little  in  his  power.  His  presence  has  a  power. 
His  advice  has  a  power.  His  friendship  has  a  power. 
The  moral  energy  of  his  kind  attentions  and  Christian 
arguments  has  a  power.  His  prayers  at  the  bed  of  sick- 
ness and  at  the  funeral  of  a  departed  parishioner  have 
a  power.  The  books  that  he  recommends  to  his  people, 
and  the  minister  whom  he  prevails  on  them  to  hear,  and 
the  habit  of  regular  attendance  upon  the  ordinances  to 
which  he  introduces  them,  have  a  power.  His  suppli- 
cations to  God  for  them  in  secret  have  a  power.  De- 
pendence upon  him  and  upon  his  blessing  for  the  suc- 
cess of  his  own  feeble  endeavors  has  a  power.  And 
when  all  these  are  brought  to  bear  on  the  rising  genera- 
tion; when  the  children  have  learned  both  to  know  and 
to  love  him;  when  they  come  to  feel  the  force  of  his 
approbation,  and,  on  every  recurring  visit,  receive  a 
fresh  impulse  from  him  to  diligence  at  school  and  duti- 
ful behavior  out  of  it;  when  the  capabilities  of  his  sim- 
ple Christian  relationship  with  the  people  thus  come  to 
be  estimated;  it  is  not  saying  too  much  to  say  that  with 
such  as  him  there  lies  the  precious  interest  of  the  growth 
and  transmission  of  Christianity  in  the  age  that  is  now 
passing  over  us,  and  that,  in  respect  of  his  own  selected 


ON    CHURCH    OFFICES  163 

neighborhood,  he  is  the  depository  of  the  moral  and  spir- 
itual destinies  of  the  future  age. 

[The  author  here  urges  that  the  elders  of  the  Church, 
as  respected  laymen,  by  taking  small  districts,  might  ren- 
der valuable  help  to  the  pastors  of  parishes,  and  he 
regards  with  regret  the  increasing  neglect  of  this  service 
on  the  part  of  business  men.  He  adds  a  few  suggestions 
to  deacons,  the  laymen  of  the  Church  who  had  the  care 
of  the  poor  fund.  He  urges  that  they  should  act  upon 
the  principles  just  urged  upon  the  elders.] 

We  know  not  a  more  interesting  case  that  can  be  sub- 
mitted to  a  deacon  than  when  an  applicant  proposes,  for 
the  first  time,  to  draw  relief  from  a  public  charity.  This 
he  is  often  compelled  to  do  from  some  temporary  dis- 
tress that  hangs  over  his  family;  and  if  the  emergency 
could  be  got  over  without  a  public  and  degrading  ex- 
posure of  him  wrho  labors  under  it,  there  would  both  be 
a  most  substantial  saving  of  the  public  fund  and  a  most 
soothing  act  of  kindness  rendered  to  the  person  who  is 
applying  for  it.  If  by  the  influence  of  the  deacon,  or 
that  of  his  friends,  work  could  be  provided  for  a  man 
in  such  circumstances,  or  some  private  and  delicate  mode 
of  relief  be  devised  for  him,  then  we  know  not  in  what 
other  way  he  could  more  effectually  establish  himself 
as  the  most  valuable  servant  of  the  public  and  the  best 
and  kindest  friend  of  his  own  immediate  population. 

[The  deaconship  is  regarded  as  a  temporary  make- 
shift; the  author  having  the  conviction  that  ultimately 
public  relief  in  homes  will  be  abolished  and  charity  left 
to  individual  benevolence.] 


CHAPTEK  VIII 

ON   SABBATH-SCHOOLS 

IT  is  well  that  in  the  various  religious  establishments 
of  Europe  provision  should  have  been  made  for  the 
learning  as  well  as  for  the  subsistence  of  a  regular  clergy. 
It  is  well  when  a  teacher  of  the  gospel,  in  addition  to 
the  strict  literature  of  his  own  profession,  is  further  ac- 
complished in  the  general  literature  of  his  times.  We 
do  not  hold  it  indispensable  that  all  should  be  so  accom- 
plished. But  that  is  a  good  course  of  education  for  the 
Church,  which  will  not  only  secure  the  possibility  that 
every  minister  may  be  learned  in  theology,  but  also  a 
chance,  bordering  upon  certainty,  that  some  of  them 
shall  attain  an  eminence  in  authority  and  respect  in  the 
other  sciences.  Christianity  should  be  provided  with 
friends  and  defenders  in  every  quarter  of  human  society ; 
and  there  should  be  among  them  such  a  distribution  of 
weapons  as  may  be  adapted  to  all  the  varieties  of  that 
extended  combat  which  is  ever  going  on  between  the 
Church  and  the  world.  And  there  is  special  reason  why 
the  prejudices  of  philosophy  against  the  gospel  should, 
if  possible,  be  met  and  mastered  by  men  capable  of 
standing  on  the  very  same  arena  and  plying  the  very 

same  tactics  with  the  most  powerful  of  its  votaries, — 

164 


ON    SABBATH-SCHOOLS  165 

and  that,  not  so  much  because  of  the  individual  benefit 
which  may  thereby  be  rendered  to  these  philosophers,  as 
because  of  their  ascendent  influence  over  the  general 
mind  of  society,  and  because  of  the  mischief  that  would 
ensue  to  myriads  beside  themselves,  could  an  exhibition 
so  degrading  be  held  forth  to  the  world  as  that  of  Chris- 
tianity which  laid  claim  to  the  light  of  revelation,  re- 
tiring abashed  from  the  light  of  cultivated  nature,  and 
not  daring  the  encounter,  when  men  rich  in  academic 
lore  or  lofty  in  general  authorship  came  forth  in  hos- 
tility against  her. 

[The  learned  ministers  are  useful  to  the  unlearned 
laborers  by  upholding  the  honor  of  the  gospel  in  high 
places  and  by  furnishing  materials  for  thought.  Yet  the 
layman  and  the  untaught  may  render  most  useful  service 
by  teaching  and  witnessing  to  the  vital  truths  of  relig- 
ion. The  illumination  of  the  divine  spirit  is  not  denied 
to  those  who  have  moral  reverence  and  holy  purpose 
and  have  not  spent  early  years  in  academic  halls.  Jona- 
than Edwards,  the  American  philosopher  and  theologian, 
is  praised  as  a  man  who  had  not  only  the  power  and 
training  of  the  scholar,  but  also  the  earnest  and  practical 
piety  of  the  pastor.] 

It  is  here  that  churches,  under  the  domination  of  a 
worldly  and  unsanctified  priesthood,  are  apt  to  go  astray. 
They  confide  the  cause  wherewith  they  are  entrusted  to 
the  merely  intellectual  class  of  laborers,  and  they  have 
overlooked,  or  rather  have  violently  and  impetuously  re- 
sisted, the  operative  class  of  laborers.  They  conceive 
that  all  is  to  be  done  by  regulation,  and  that  nothing  but 


166  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

what  is  mischievous  is  to  be  done  by  impulse.  Their 
measures  are  generally  all  of  a  sedative,  and  few  or  none 
of  them  of  a  stimulating,  tendency.  Their  chief  concern 
is  to  repress  the  pruriencies  of  religious  zeal,  and  not  to 
excite  or  foster  the  zeal  itself.  .  .  .  It  is  quite  a 
possible  thing  for  the  same  church  to  have  a  proud  com- 
placency in  the  lore  and  argument  and  professional  sci- 
ence of  certain  of  its  ministers;  and,  along  with  this, 
to  have  a  proud  contempt  for  the  pious  earnestness  and 
pious  activity  of  certain  other  of  its  ministers.  It  may 
applaud  the  talent  by  which  Christianity  is  estimated, 
but  discourage  the  talent  by  which  Christianity  is  made. 
.  .  .  To  judge  of  an  impression  requires  one  species 
of  talent,  to  make  an  impression  requires  another.  They 
both  may  exist  in  very  high  perfection  with  the  same 
individual.  But  they  may  also  exist  apart.  .  - .  .  The 
right  way  for  a  church  is  to  encourage  both  these  talents 
to  the  uttermost.  It  is  possible  so  to  chill  and  to  dis- 
courage the  productive  faculties  in  our  Church  as  that 
its  assaying  faculty  shall  have  no  samples  on  which  to 
sit  in  judgment. 

[There  follows  a  further  plea  for  those  who  plough 
as  well  as  for  those  whose  only  instrument  of  husbandry 
is  the  pruning-hook ;  for  those  who  are  familiar  with  the 
heart-truths  of  the  gospel,  even  if  they  cannot  read 
Hebrew  and  Greek.  Trained  theologians  should  inspect 
the  labor  of  unlettered  but  vital  workers,  but  they  should 
not  put  a  stop  to  it.  A  clergyman  should  not  lay  an 
interdict  upon  a  host  of  Christian  agency  of  those  who 
may  be  beneath  him  in  literature  but  far  before  him  in 
the  instrumental  power  of  making  Christians.  It  is  not 


ON   SABBATH-SCHOOLS  167 

by  lectures  on  law  and  politics  that  a  restless  and  law- 
less population  can  be  induced  to  become  good  citizens, 
but  rather  by  the  presence  among  them  of  some  who, 
in  their  own  character,  realize  the  worth  and  the  practi- 
cal wisdom  of  the  good  citizen.] 

The  simple  presence  of  a  man,  humble  it  may  be  in 
rank,  but  richly  endowed  either  with  Christian  or  with 
constitutional  benevolence — it  is  this,  unaccompanied 
with  all  metaphysical  discernment  or  the  power  of  meta- 
physical explanation,  that  will  do  more  to  expel  the  spirit 
of  rancor  from  a  neighborhood,  and  to  substitute  the 
spirit  of  charity  in  its  place,  than  any  theoretical  expo- 
sition of  principles  or  processes  can  possibly  accomplish. 
It  is  not  the  man  that  best  lectures  on  the  operation  of  the 
moving  force,  but  the  man  who  is  possessed  of  the  moving 
force,  and  actually  wields  it  .  .  .  it  is  he  who  works 
the  practical  consequence  on  the  temper  and  mind  of  the 
neighborhood  over  which  he  expatiates.  And  thus  it  is 
that  the  man  of  Christian  love  operates  more  powerfully 
as  a  leaven  in  his  vicinity  than  the  man  of  Christian 
learning;  and  it  is  altogether  a  mistake  that  a  long  and 
laborious  routine  of  scholarship  must  be  described  ere 
the  exertions  of  a  Christian  teacher  shall,  with  efficacy, 
tell  on  the  moral  and  spiritual  habit  of  the  disciples  who 
repair  to  him.  .  .  . 

In  every  church  let  securities  be  provided  for  the 
highest  attainments  of  Christian  literature,  so  as  that 
many  ecclesiastics  shall  be  found  in  it  rich  in  all  the 
deep  and  varied  erudition  of  theology.  We  know  not 
a  nobler  intellectual  eminence  than  that  which  mav  be 


168  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

gained  on  the  neglected  walks  of  sound  and  Scriptural 
philosophy  by  one  who,  with  a  mind  stored  both  in  the 
criticism  and  antiquities  of  his  profession,  further  knows 
how  to  impregnate  his  acquisitions  with  the  liberal  and 
experimental  spirit  of  our  age,  and  who,  without  com- 
muting the  orthodoxy  of  God's  imperishable  record, 
could  so  far  modernize  the  science  of  which  he  was,  at 
the  same  time,  both  the  champion  and  the  ornament,  as 
to  evolve  upon  the  world,  not  its  new  truths,  but  its  new 
applications.  Christianity  never  changes,  but  the  com- 
plexion and  habits  of  the  species  are  always  changing; 
and  thus  may  there  be  an  exhaustless  novelty  both  of 
remark  and  illustration  in  our  intellectual  treatment  of 
a  science  which  touches  at  almost  every  point  on  the 
nature  of  man,  and  bears  with  decisive  effect  on  the  whole 
frame  and  economics  of  civil  society. 

But  it  were  giving  the  last  finish  to  the  character  of 
his  mind  if,  amid  the  pride  and  the  prowess  of  its  rare 
accomplishments,  he  could  appreciate  aright  the  piety 
and  the  practical  labors  of  an  unlettered  Christian;  and 
it  would  confer  upon  him  that  very  thing  which  is  so 
touching  in  the  simplicity  of  Newton,  or  in  the  mission- 
ary zeal  and  devotedness  of  Boyle,  if,  while  surrounded 
by  the  trophies  of  his  own  successful  authorship,  he 
could  be  made  to  see  that,  however  profound  in  the 
didactics  of  Christianity,  yet,  in  the  actual  work  of 
giving  a  personal  spread  to  Christianity,  there  is  many 
an  humble  man  of  privacy  and  of  prayer  who  is  far 
before  him. 

There  are  two  sets  of  clergy  in  every  Establishment, 


ON   SABBATH-SCHOOLS  169 

and  it  were  curious  to  observe  how  each  of  them  stands 
affected  to  the  two  questions,  whether  the  ministers  of 
the  gospel  shall  be  more  richly  furnished  with  Christian 
literature,  and  whether  the  laymen  who  are  under  them 
shall  be  permitted  to  supplement  the  duties  of  the  clerical 
office  with  Christian  labor.  There  is  one  class  of  our 
ecclesiastics,  both  in  England  and  Scotland,  who  have  a 
taste  for  popular  agency  and  lay  enterprises  and  the 
whole  apparatus  of  religious  schools  and  religious  socie- 
ties, which  are  so  multiplying  around  us  in  this  busy 
age  of  philanthropic  activity  and  adventure.  Now, 
what  we  would  ask  of  such  ecclesiastics  is  whether  they 
would  feel  a  relish  or  repugnance  toward  those  meas- 
ures, the  effect  of  which  is  to  exhort  the  clergy  of  the 
Church  to  a  higher  pre-eminence  than  they  even  now 
occupy,  for  all  the  accomplishments  of  sacred  literature? 
Will  they  come  forward  and  say  that  they  are  afraid  of 
literature?  that  a  clergy  too  enlightened  would  not  suit 
them?  that,  loving  to  breathe  in  the  muddy  atmosphere 
of  popular  ignorance  and  popular  folly,  they  want  no 
science  and  no  scholarship,  whose  hateful  beams  might 
disperse  the  congenial  vapors  wherewith  the  efferves- 
cence of  plebeianism  has  filled  and  overspread  the  whole 
scene  of  their  ignoble  labors?  Do  they  tremble  lest  the 
light  of  philosophy  should  penetrate  into  the  dark  un- 
known of  their  own  inglorious  skulking  places?  And 
are  they  really  conscious,  after  all,  that  what  they  have 
headed  and  patronized  is  a  low,  paltry,  drivelling  fanati- 
cism, which  would  shrink  before  the  full  gaze  of  a  let- 
tered and  intellectual  Church,  where  every  minister  were 


170  CHKISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

a  luminary  of  science  as  well  as  a  luminary  of  the  gos- 
pel? These  are  the  degrading  imputations  they  will 
bring  upon  themselves  by  any  resistance  they  shall  make 
to  the  learning  of  the  clergy;  and  such  resistance,  if 
offered,  is  the  very  thing  that  will  propagate  the  timely 
alarm  to  another  quarter,  and  will  cause,  we  trust,  the 
friends  of  learning  to  rally  and  to  form  into  strength 
elsewhere.  Those  ministers  who,  whether  under  the 
name  of  the  high  church,  or  of  the  moderate,  or  of  the 
rational  party,  feel  a  strong  disrelish  toward  the  active 
interference  of  laymen  in  the  work  of  religious  instruc- 
tion, will  know  how  to  act  should  they  perceive,  in  the 
party  of  their  antagonists,  an  equally  strong  disrelish 
toward  any  measure  that  goes  to  augment  the  profes- 
sional literature  of  all  our  future  ecclesiastics.  They 
cannot  be  blind  to  the  fact  that,  at  this  moment,  there 
is  a  fermentation,  and  a  brooding  activity,  and  an  un- 
exampled restlessness,  and  a  busy  movement  of  schemes 
and  of  operations,  before  unknown  in  the  walks  of  popu- 
lar Christianity;  and  if,  additional  to  all  this,  they 
should  further  see  a  dread  on  the  part  of  zealous  cham- 
pions and  overseers  lest  the  lamp  of  Christian  literature 
should  be  lighted  up  into  greater  brilliancy  than  before, 
we  trust  that  this  will  be  felt  and  understood  by  those 
who  nauseate  what  they  term  the  missionary  and  meth- 
odistical  spirit  of  our  age  as  the  intimation  of  what  they 
ought  to  do.  It  is  not  by  putting  forth  the  arm  of  in- 
tolerance that  they  will  reach  it  its  exterminating  blow. 
.  .  .  These  are  not  the  legitimate  defences  of  our 
Church  against  hateful  fanaticism;  and  they  who  have 


ON   SABBATH-SCHOOLS  171 

set  themselves  in  array  against  this  hydra,  whether  she 
be  indeed  a  reality  or  only  a  bugbear  of  their  own  imag- 
ination, can  do  nothing  better  than  to  rear  a  literary 
and  enlightened  priesthood,  under  the  eye  of  whose 
vigilance  all  that  is  truly  noxious  and  evil  will  be  most 
eifectually  disarmed. 

But  should  the  friends  of  this  so-called  fanaticism 
among  the  clergy  be  also  the  friends,  and  not  the  ene- 
mies, of  scientific  and  theological  accomplishment  in 
their  own  order;  should  they  dare  their  antagonists  to 
the  open  arena  of  light  and  liberty;  should  their  de- 
mand be  that  the  torch  of  learning  shall  be  blown  into 
a  clearer  and  intenser  flame,  and  be  brought  to  shine 
upon  all  their  opinions  and  all  their  ways;  should  the 
cry  which  they  send  forth  be  for  more  of  erudition  and 
more  of  philosophy,  and  that  not  one  single  laborer  shall 
be  admitted  to  the  ministerial  field  till  our  universities, 
those  established  luminaries  of  our  land,  have  shed  upon 
his  understanding  a  larger  supply  of  that  pure  and  chaste 
and  academic  light,  the  property  of  which  is  to  guide, 
and  not  to  bewilder,  to  clarify  the  eye  of  the  mind,  and 
not  to  dazzle  it  to  the  overpowering  of  all  its  faculties; 
if  this  be  the  beseeching  voice  of  fanaticism,  and  it  be 
left  to  pass  unregarded  away,  then  shall  the  enemies  of 
fanaticism  have  become  the  enemies  of  knowledge;  and 
our  Church,  instead  of  exhibiting  the  aspect  of  zeal  tem- 
pered by  wisdom,  and  of  a  warm,  active,  busy  spirit  of 
Christian  philanthropy  under  the  control  and  guardian- 
ship of  accomplished  and  well  educated  clergymen,  may 
at  length,  desolated  of  all  its  pieties,  be  turned  into  a 


172  CHEISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

heartless  scene  of  secularity  and  coarseness  and  contempt 
for  vital  religion,  where  the  sacredness  of  Christianity 
has  fled  and  left  not  behind  it  one  redeeming  quality 
in  the  science  of  Christianity  among  its  officiating  min- 
isters; and,  alike  abandoned  by  the  light  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  and  the  light  of  human  philosophy,  it  will  offer 
the  spectacle  of  a  dreary  and  extended  waste,  without 
one  spot  of  loveliness  or  verdure  which  the  eye  can  de- 
light to  rest  upon. 

[It  was  objected  to  the  Sabbath-school  that  it  detaches 
the  young  from  family  worship  and  the  sacred  influ- 
ences of  domestic  piety.  There  follows  this  powerful 
plea  for  the  institution:] 

Is  it  possible  for  any  man  at  all  acquainted  with  the 
chronology  of  Sabbath-schools  to  affirm  that  they  are 
the  instruments  of  having  overthrown  the  family  relig- 
ion of  Scotland?  Have  they  operated  as  so  many  ruth- 
less invaders  on  what,  at  the  time  of  their  entrance,  was 
a  beauteous  moral  domain,  and  swept  away  from  it  all 
that  was  affecting  or  graceful  in  the  observations  of  our 
forefathers?  Whether  did  they  desolate  the  territory, 
or  have  they  only  made  their  lodgment  on  what  was 
already  a  scene  of  desolation?  The  truth  is  that  for 
many  years  previous  to  the  extension  of  this  system,  a 
woful  degeneracy  was  going  on  in  the  religious  habit 
and  character  of  our  country;  that,  from  the  wanton 
outrages  inflicted  by  unrelenting  patronage  on  the  taste 
and  demand  of  parishes,  the  religious  spirit,  once  so 
characteristic  of  our  nation,  has  long  been  rapidly  sub- 


ON    SABBATH-SCHOOLS  173 

siding;  that,  more  particularly  in  our  groat  towns,  the 
population  have  so  outgrown  the  old  ecclesiastical  sys- 
tem, as  to  have  accumulated  there  into  so  many  masses 
of  practical  heathenism: — and  now  the  state  of  the  al- 
ternative is  not  whether  the  rising  generation  shall  be 
trained  to  Christianity  in  schools,  or  trained  to  it  under 
the  roof  of  their  fathers,  but  whether  they  shall  be 
trained  to  it  in  schools  or  not  trained  to  it  at  all.  It  is 
whether  a  process  of  deterioration  which  originated  more 
than  half  a  century  ago,  and  has  been  rapid  and  resistless 
in  its  various  tendencies  ever  since,  whether  it  shall  be  suf- 
fered to  carry  our  people  still  more  downward  in  the  scale 
of  moral  blindness  and  depravity,  or  whether  the  only 
remaining  expedient  for  arresting  it  shall  be  put  into  op- 
eration. Were  it  as  easy  a  task  to  prevail  on  an  irreligious 
parent  to  set  up  the  worship  and  instruction  of  religion  in 
his  family,  as  to  get  his  consent,  and  prevail  upon  his 
children  to  attend  the  ministrations  of  a  Sabbath-school, 
there  might  then  be  some  appearance  of  room  for  all  the 
obloquy  that  has  been  cast  upon  these  institutions.  But 
as  the  matter  stands,  in  many  a  city  and  in  many  a 
parish,  the  Christian  philanthropist  is  shut  up  to  an  ef- 
fort upon  the  young  as  his  last  chance  for  the  moral 
regeneration  of  our  country.  In  despair  (and  it  is  a 
despair  warranted  by  all  experience)  of  operating  with 
extensive  effect  on  the  confirmed  habit  and  obstinacy 
of  manhood,  he  arrests  the  human  plant  at  an  earlier 
and  more  susceptible  stage,  and  puts  forth  the  only  hand 
that  ever  would  have  offered  for  the  culture  and  the 
training  of  this  young  immortal.  In  the  great  majority 


174  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

of  instances  he  does  not  withdraw  his  pupils,  for  a  sin- 
gle moment,  from  any  Christian  influence  that  would 
have  descended  upon  them  in  another  quarter,  but 
showers  upon  their  heads  and  their  hearts  the  only  Chris- 
tian influence  they  ever  are  exposed  to.  He  is,  in  fact, 
building  up  again  that  very  system  with  the  destruction 
of  which  he  has  been  charged,  and  rearing  many  young 
who,  but  for  him,  would  have  been  the  still  more  cor- 
rupt descendants  of  a  corrupt  parentage,  to  be  the  re- 
ligious guides  and  examples  of  a  future  generation.  .  .  . 
Parents,  in  spite  of  themselves,  feel  an  interest  in 
that  which  interests  and  occupies  their  children,  and 
through  the  medium  of  natural  affection  have  their 
thoughts  been  caught  to  the  subject  of  Christianity;  and 
the  very  tasks  and  exercises  of  their  children  have 
brought  a  theme  to  their  evening  circle,  upon  which, 
aforetimes,  not  a  syllable  of  utterance  was  ever  heard; 
and  still  more,  when  a  small  and  select  library  is  at- 
tached to  the  institution,  has  it  been  the  means  of  cir- 
culating, through  many  a  household  privacy,  such  wis- 
dom and  such  piety  as  were  indeed  new  visitants  upon 
a  scene  till  now  untouched  by  any  print  or  footstep  of 
sacredness.  .  .  . 

[It  would  not  be  wise  to  provide  Sabbath-schools 
merely  for  the  children  of  irreligious  families,  for  then 
even  these,  being  marked  out  as  singular  and  inferior, 
would  cease  to  attend  a  place  whose  pupils  were  known 
to  be  socially  inferior.  The  Sabbath-school  can,  with 
all  safety  to  the  children  of  the  better  families,  bring 
all  together  under  the  care  of  teachers,  so  that  the  higher 


ON   SABBATH-SCHOOLS  175 

influences  of  a  neighborhood  are  brought  into  saving 
contact  with  all  others,  to  the  common  advantage.  An 
argument  ad  hominem  is  introduced  in  reply  to  those 
who  objected  to  lay  teaching  and  yet  decry  the  Sabbath- 
school  because  it  interferes,  as  they  assert,  with  family 
instruction.] 

By  admitting  the  competency  of  parents  to  teach 
Christianity  to  their  children  they  admit  that  part  of  this 
work,  at  least,  may  be  confided  to  other  hands  than  those 
of  regular  and  ordained  clergy.  They  admit  that  a 
father  in  humble  life  may  be  the  instrument  of  trans- 
mitting Christian  wisdom  and  Christian  worth  to  his  own 
children,  and  that,  though  it  were  quackery  for  each 
parent  to  undertake  the  cure  of  family  diseases,  it  is  not 
quackery  for  each  to  undertake  the  work  of  family  in- 
struction. Thus  the  comparison  between  the  efforts  of 
the  unlicensed  in  theology  and  medicine  is,  by  them  at 
least,  practically  given  up.  We  hold  this  to  be  a  signal 
testimony,  and  from  the  mouths  of  adversaries,  too,  to 
the  power  of  unlettered  Christianity,  in  propagating  its 
own  likeness  throughout  the  young  of  our  rising  gen- 
eration— a  power  which  most  assuredly  would  not  all 
go  to  dissipation,  though  for  a  short  time  every  Sabbath 
evening  it  were  transported  from  its  place  in  the  family 
to  a  new  place  in  such  a  seminary  of  religious  instruc- 
tion as  we  have  attempted  to  advocate. 

[Persons  in  humble  circumstances,  even  without  the 
prestige  of  social  rank,  have  a  certain  advantage  in  Sab- 
bath-school teaching,  since  they  do  not  excite  any  mer- 


176  CHEISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

cenary  expectations  in  the  poor,  and  are  regarded  for 
their  character  alone.] 


This  holds  out  a  brilliant  moral  perspective  to  the  eye 
of  the  philanthropist.  In  a  few  years  many  of  the  schol- 
ars at  our  present  seminaries  will  be  convertible  into  the 
teachers  of  a  future  generation.  There  will  be  indefinite 
additions  made  to  our  religious  agency.  Instead  of  hav- 
ing to  assail,  as  now,  the  general  bulk  of  the  population 
by  a  Christian  influence  from  without,  the  mass  itself 
will  be  penetrated,  and,  through  the  means  of  residing 
and  most  effective  teachers,  there  will  be  kept  up  a  busy 
process  of  internal  circulation.  It  is  thus  that  he  who 
can  work  patiently  at  small  things,  and  be  content  to 
wait  for  great  things,  lends  by  far  the  best  contribution 
to  the  mighty  achievement  of  regenerating  our  land. 
Extremes  meet,  and  the  sanguine  philanthropist,  who  is 
goaded  on  by  his  impatience  to  try  all  things  and  look 
for  some  great  and  immediate  result,  will  soon  be  plunged 
into  the  despair  of  ever  being  able  to  do  anything  at  all. 
The  man  who  can  calmly  set  himself  down  to  the  work 
of  a  district  school,  and  there  be  satisfied  to  live  and  to 
labor  without  a  name,  may  germinate  a  moral  influence 
that  will  at  length  overspread  the  whole  city  of  his 
habitation. 

A  single  lane  or  court  in  London  is  surely  not  more 
impracticable  than  in  other  towns  of  this  empire.  There 
is  one  man  to  be  found  there  who  can  assume  it  as  his 
locality  and  acquit  himself  thoroughly  and  well  of  the 
duties  it  lays  upon  him.  There  is  another  who  can  pitch 


ON    SABBATH-SCHOOLS  177 

beside  him,  on  a  contiguous  settlement,  and,  without 
feeling  bound  to  speculate  for  the  whole  metropolis,  can 
pervade  and  do  much  to  purify  his  assumed  portion  of 
it.  There  is  a  third  who  will  find  that  a  walk  so  un- 
noticed and  obscure  is  the  best  suited  to  his  modesty, 
and  a  fourth  who  will  be  eager  to  reap,  on  the  same 
field,  that  reward  of  kind  and  simple  gratitude  in  which 
his  heart  is  most  fitted  to  rejoice.  ...  So  long  as 
a  man  of  mediocrity  conceives  himself  to  be  a  man  of 
might,  and  sighs  after  some  scene  of  enlargement  that 
may  be  adequate  to  his  fancied  powers,  little  or  nothing 
will  be  done;  but  as  soon  as  the  sweeping  and  sublime 
imagination  is  dissipated,  and  he  can  stoop  to  the  drudg- 
ery of  his  small  allotment  in  the  field  of  usefulness, 
then  will  it  be  found  how  it  is  by  the  summation  of 
many  humble  mediocrities  that  a  mighty  result  is  at 
length  arrived  at.  ... 

In  this  laborious  process  of  nursing  an  empire  to  Chris- 
tianity we  know  not  at  present  a  readier  or  more  avail- 
able apparatus  of  means  than  that  which  has  been  raised 
by  methodism.  In  every  large  town  of  England  it  owns 
a  number  of  disciples,  and,  through  a  skilful  mechanism 
that  has  been  long  in  operation,  there  is  a  minute  ac- 
quaintance on  the  part  of  their  leaders  with  the  talents 
and  character  of  each  of  them.  Why  should  not  they 
avail  themselves  of  their  existing  facilities  for  the  adop- 
tion of  this  system,  and  so  thoroughly  pervade  that 
population  by  their  Sabbath-schools,  which  they  only  as 
yet  have  partially  drawn  to  their  pulpits?  It  would  be 
doing  more,  in  the  long  run,  to  renovate  and  multiply 
12 


178  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  chapels  of  methodism  than  all  that  has  yet  been 
devised  by  them;  and  thus  might  they  both  extend  re- 
ligious education  among  the  young  and  a  church-going 
habit  throughout  the  general  population.  We  doubt  not 
that  with  this  new  style  of  tactics  they  would  mightily 
alarm  the  Establishment.  But  so  much  the  better.  This 
is  just  the  salutary  application  which  the  Establishment 
stands  in  need  of.  And,  from  all  that  we  have  learned 
of  the  catholic  and  liberal  spirit  of  this  class  of  dis- 
senters, we  guess  that,  though  they  did  no  more  than 
simply  stimulate  the  Church  of  England  to  do  the  whole 
work,  and  to  do  it  aright,  they  would  bless  God  and 
rejoice. 

Such  is  the  good-will  we  bear  to  sectarianism  that  we 
should  rejoice  in  nothing  more  than  to  behold  their  in- 
stantaneous adoption  of  an  expedient  which,  we  hon- 
estly believe,  would  add  tenfold  to  their  resources  and 
their  influence.  Let  them  operate  in  large  towns  on  the 
principle  of  locality.  Let  them  enter  on  the  territorial 
possession  of  this  peopled  wilderness.  Let  them  erect 
as  many  district  schools  and  district  chapels  as  they  find 
that  they  have  room  for;  and  if  the  Establishment  will 
not  be  roused  by  this  manifold  activity  out  of  its  leth- 
argies, then  sectarianism  will  at  length  earn,  and  most 
rightfully  earn,  all  the  honors  and  all  the  ascendency 
of  an  Establishment.  It  is,  indeed,  a  most  likely  thing 
that  the  Church  would  be  put  into  motion;  and  this  of 
itself  were  an  important  good  rendered  to  the  country 
by  the  industry  and  zeal  of  dissenters.  But  when  we 
look  to  the  fearful  deficiency  of  our  ecclesiastical  sys- 


ON    SABBATH-SCHOOLS  179 

tern  there  is  no  fear  lest  all  the  galley-boats  of  sectarian- 
ism, with  the  slow  and  ponderous  Establishment  in  tow, 
will  soon  overtake  the  mighty  extent  of  our  yet  unpro- 
vided population.  Xor  do  we  know  of  any  common 
enterprise  that  would  promise  fairer,  at  length,  for  em- 
bodying the  Church  and  the  dissenters  together  by  some 
such  act  of  comprehensive  union  as  has  lately  reflected 
so  much  honor  on  the  two  most  numerous  classes  of  dis- 
senters in  our  country. 


END  OF  VOL.   I 


VOLUME  II 

CHAPTER  IX 

ON  THE  RELATION  THAT  SUBSISTS  BETWEEN  THE 
CHRISTIAN  AND  THE  CIVIC  ECONOMY  OF  LARGE 
TOWNS 

[THE  author  here  summarizes  the  preceding  argument 
and  urges  that  in  each  parish  the  residents  of  that  parish 
be  given  the  preference  in  letting  vacant  pews,  so  that 
gradually  all  the  attendants  would  be  neighbors  affected 
by  "  the  principle  of  locality."  The  churches  would  be 
filled  up  by  pastoral  labor,  and  not  merely  by  pulpit  at- 
traction. He  is  not  sanguine  that  city  officials  will  ap- 
preciate the  argument  and  take  the  wise  and  necessary 
measures  for  improvement.  The  custom  of  giving  the 
preference  to  rich  men  outside  of  a  parish,  instead  of  to 
the  poor  men  in  it,  had  already  led  to  that  neglect  of 
religion  which  menaced  the  Christianity  and  order  of 
Scottish  cities.  The  danger  in  a  State  Church  is  that 
"  her  best  and  dearest  interests  happen  to  lie  at  the  dis- 
posal of  men  who  have  neither  the  heart  to  care  for  the 
success  of  a  generous  enterprise  nor  the  talent  to  ap- 
preciate it."] 

It  is  much  better  for  the  right  Christian  economy  of 
a  town  when  the  rule  of  parochial  equity  in  seat-letting 
tends  to  the  disappointment  of  capitalists  than  to  the 
disappointment  of  laborers.  By  the  former  disappoint- 
ment an  effective  interest  is  created  in  behalf  of  more 

181 


182  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

churches;  and  the  inconvenience  of  a  limited  accom- 
modation is  made  to  fall  upon  those  who  are  most  able 
to  remedy  and  extend  it;  and  these  wealthy  outcasts 
can  form  into  a  powerful  body  of  application  for  an 
additional  church,  so  that  to  reject  the  application  of  the 
wealthy  in  favor  of  the  poor  is  to  walk  in  that  direct  line 
which  leads  to  the  increase  of  our  ecclesiastical  provision 
in  great  cities.  Whereas  to  reject  the  applications  of 
the  poor  in  favor  of  the  wealthy  is  just,  to  reverse  this 
process.  It  is  to  make  irrecoverable  outcasts  of  those 
who  are  without  the  means  of  at  all  helping  themselves. 
It  is  to  damp  into  irrecoverable  apathy  the  whole  class 
of  society  to  which  they  belong.  .  .  .  It  is  thus 
that  men  who  are  the  very  first  to  tremble  at  the  out- 
breakings  of  radicalism  may  lie  the  most  deeply  charge- 
able with  the  guilt  of  having  fed  and  sustained  it  in 
principle;  withholding,  as  they  do,  the  best  counter- 
action to  all  the  brooding  elements  of  a  fiery  and  mis- 
chievous fermentation.  .  .  . 

[It  is  true  that  only  a  part  of  those  who  come  under 
the  preaching  of  the  ministry  give  clear  evidence  of  a 
real  and  vital  Christianity  in  their  lives;  but,  so  far  as 
men  are  thus  affected,  it  is  exactly  through  the  most 
carefully  devised  and  thoroughly  administered  local 
agencies  that  this  most  desirable  result  is  to  be  attained.] 

By  subdividing  parishes  we  just  'multiply  these  path- 
ways, and  by  localizing  parishes  we  just  make  the 
pathways  shorter  and  more  convenient  and  accessible 
than  before.  We  do  not  set  aside  the  doctrine  of  a 


ON    THEIR   RELATIONS    IN    LARGE    TOWNS         183 

spiritual  influence,  for  we  believe  that  it  is  tliis  which 
will  be  the  primary  and  the  essential  agent  in  that  great 
moral  regeneration  that  awaits  our  species.  But  just  as 
in  the  irrigating  processes  of  Egypt  the  reservoirs  are 
constructed,  and  the  furrows  are  drawn,  and  every  field 
on  the  banks  of  the  l^ile  is  put  into  readiness  for  the 
coming  inundation,  so  we,  knowing  that  the  spirit 
maketh  its  passage  into  the  human  heart  by  the  word 
and  the  ordinances  of  the  gospel,  are  just  laboring  at  a 
right  process  of  spiritual  irrigation  when  we  provide  such 
arrangements  as  will  bring  the  greatest  number  of  hu- 
man beings  into  broadest  and  most  recurring  contact 
with  this  word  and  with  these  ordinances. 

But  at  present  we  have  it  still  more  at  heart  to  pro- 
pitiate our  mere  civil  and  political  philanthropists  to  the 
cause  of  a  right  ecclesiastical  system  for  cities.  And 
the  argument  we  would  urge  upon  them  is  that,  under 
such  a  system,  the  civic  benefit  which  they  most  care 
for  is  both  anterior  in  regard  of  time,  and  greatly  more 
extended  in  regard  of  diffusion,  than  the  Christian  bene- 
fit about  which,  we  fear,  they  are  much  less  solicitous. 
.  .  .  He  who  is  most  qualified  for  the  Christian  good 
of  turning  some  from  darkness  to  spiritual  light,  is  also 
most  qualified  for  the  civic  good  of  turning  many  from 
their  habits  of  Sabbath  riot  and  Sabbath  profanation  to, 
at  least,  a  personal  attendance  on  the  services  of  Chris- 
tianity. ...  Conceive  one  family  in  humble  and 
operative  life,  trained,  though  it  may  only  be  to  the  out- 
ward regularities  of  a  Christian  Sabbath,  and  taking 
respectable  occupancy  of  its  own  pew,  where  it  exhibits 


184  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  domestic  group  of  well-doing  parents  and  well-dis- 
ciplined children,  each  exchanging  on  that  day  the  garb 
of  citizenship  for  the  becoming  holiday  attire,  which 
thrift  and  management  have  enabled  them  to  provide; 
and  retained  in  constant  attendance  on  the  lessons  of  a 
minister  from  whom,  if  they  do  not  inhale  the  vital  spirit, 
they  will  at  least  imbibe,  though  perhaps  insensibly, 
somewhat  of  the  sedate  and  moral  tone  of  Christianity, 
and  be  strengthened  in  their  taste  for  the  decencies  of 
even-going  citizenship.  May  we  not  read  on  the  very 
aspect  of  such  a  family  the  indications  of  virtue  and 
order  and  industry  through  the  week,  and  a  manifest 
superiority  in  all  these  attributes  over  another  family 
that  spends  its  Sabbaths  recklessly  and  at  large?  It  is 
certainly  not  from  families  of  a  right  Sabbatical  habit 
that  popular  violence  will  draw  the  aliment  by  which 
it  is  upholden,  for  it  is  a  habit  which  holds  no  alliance 
whatever  with  dissipation  or  idleness  or  discontent. 

It  is  a  sad  contemplation  to  him  whose  heart  is  occu- 
pied with  the  weight  and  reality  of  eternal  things  that 
out  of  so  vast  a  population  a  mere  handful  of  converts 
may  be  the  whole  fruit  of  a  lengthened  and  laborious 
incumbency.  And  yet  it  is  an  experimental  truth,  that 
in  respect  of  temporal  and  immediate  good  the  whole 
population  may  be  sensibly  bettered  by  the  ever  recur- 
ring presence  of  an  affectionate  pastor  in  the  midst  of 
them.  The  primary  impulse,  it  is  true,  on  which  he  sets 
out  among  his  people  is  the  good  of  their  immortality; 
and  in  the  occasional  fulfilment  of  this  high  errand  he 
finds  his  encouragement  and  reward.  But  he  scatters 


ON    THEIR   RELATIONS    IN    LARGE    TOWNS         185 

abroad,  and  far  more  largely,  among  the  families  an- 
other good,  which,  though  but  of  secondary  and  sub- 
ordinate importance  in  his  eyes,  is  enough  to  stamp  him, 
in  the  estimation  of  every  civil  and  political  ruler,  as  by 
far  the  most  useful  servant  of  the  community.  There 
is  a  substantial,  though  unnoticed,  charm  in  the  visit  of 
a  superior.  There  is  a  felt  compliment  in  his  attentions, 
which  raises  an  emotion  in  the  breast,  the  very  opposite 
of  that  disdainful  sentiment  toward  the  higher  orders  of 
society  that  is  now  of  such  alarming  prevalence  among 
our  operative  population.  There  is  a  real  contribution 
made  to  the  earthly  moralities  of  the  poor  man  by  the 
consciousness  of  that  friendly  tie  which  unites  him  in 
an  acquaintanceship  that  is  ever  growing  with  the  min- 
ister of  his  parish.  The  very  aim  that  is  made  by  the 
people  to  afford  him  a  decent  reception,  in  the  cleanli- 
ness of  their  houses  and  the  dress  of  their  children,  is 
not  to  be  overlooked  in  our  estimate  of  the  bland  and 
beneficial  influences  that  accompany  his  frequent  reitera- 
tions over  the  face  of  his  allotted  vineyard. 

It  both  serves  to  spread  this  moral  cement  and  forms 
a  mighty  addition  to  its  quantity  when  the  minister,  by 
means  of  a  well-appointed  eldership,  can  multiply  among 
his  people  the  number  of  their  Christian  friends  who 
enter  their  abodes  and  take  a  kindly  interest  in  their 
families. 


[The  building  up  of  local  centres  of  sympathy,  ac- 
quaintance, and  interests  would  do  much  to  assuage  the 
riotous  tendencies  which  sometimes  sweep  over  a  city.] 


186  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

It  is  the  distance  between  the  ruler  and  his  subjects 
which,  whether  in  the  unwieldy  State  or  in  the  unwieldy 
metropolis,  leaves  room  for  those  dark  and  brooding 
imaginations  that  are  so  apt  to  fret  and  infuriate  into  a 
storm.  The  more  that  this  distance  is  alleviated  by  the 
subdivisions  of  locality,  the  more  do  the  charities  of 
a  common  companionship  mingle  in  the  commotion, 
and  exude  an  oil  upon  the  waters,  that  assuages  their 
violence. 

Sabbath-school  teachers,  above  others,  have  a  direct 
opportunity  to  observe  the  refining  and  elevating  effect 
of  intimate  and  friendly  contact  with  the  poor. 

We  must  not  omit  the  fine  remark  of  Wilberforce  re- 
specting the  power  of  Christianity  to  elevate  the  general 
standard  of  morals,  even  in  countries  where  it  has  failed 
of  positively  converting  more  than  a  very  small  propor- 
tion of  the  inhabitants.  The  direct  good  which  Chris- 
tianity does  is  when  it  stamps  the  impress  of  its  doctrine 
on  the  few  whom  it  makes  to  be  the  living  epistles  of 
Christ  Jesus.  But  they  are  epistles  which,  to  use  the 
language  of  Holy  Writ,  may  be  seen  and  read  of  all  men. 
Society  at  large  may  not  be  able  to  appreciate  the  hidden 
principle  of  the  evangelical  life;  but  they  can,  at  least, 
peruse  the  inscription  of  its  visible  graces  and  virtues, 
and  can  render  them  the  homage  both  of  their  full  es- 
teem and  of  their  partial  imitation.  .  .  . 

This  is  a  process  the  rationale  of  which  might  be  ob- 
vious enough,  even  to  a  mere  earthly  understanding,  and 
so  might  the  power  and  the  charm  of  locality;  and  so 
might  the  effect  of  one  Christian's  example  in  raising 


ON   THEIR    RELATIONS   IN    LARGE    TOWNS        187 

the  standard  of  morality  among  many  who  arc  not  Chris- 
tians; and  so  might  the  tendency  of  Sabbath-schooling, 
both  to  induce  a  more  orderly  and  civilized  habit  among 
the  young  and  to  strengthen  the  tie  of  kindliness  between 
the  teachers  and  the  taught,  or  between  the  higher  and 
lower  ranks  of  the  community.  There  is  not  surely  of 
the  mystic  or  unsubstantial  in  any  of  these  influences; 
and  if,  nevertheless,  they  be  the  most  faithful  stewards 
of  the  mysteries  of  God,  from  whom  they  are  most  ready 
to  descend  on  the  families  of  our  general  population, 
there  ought  to  be  an  indication  here  to  our  men  of  po- 
litical ascendency,  whether  in  the  State  or  city  corpora- 
tion, of  what  that  is  which  forms  our  best  and  cheapest 
defence  against  the  evils  of  a  rude  and  lawless  and 
profligate  community. 


CHAPTEK  X 

ON  THE  BEARING  WHICH  A  EIGHT  CHRISTIAN  ECONOMY 
HAS  UPON  PAUPERISM 

WE  are  able  to  affirm,  on  the  highest  of  all  authorities, 
that  the  poor  shall  be  with  us  always ;  or,  in  other  words, 
that  it  is  vain  to  look  for  the  extinction  of  poverty 
from  the  world.  And  yet  we  hold  it  both  desirable  and 
practicable  to  accomplish  the  extinction  of  pauperism; 
so  that  between  the  state  of  poverty  and  that  of  pauper- 
ism there  must  be  a  distinction  which,  to  save  confusion, 
ought  to  be  kept  in  mind  and  to  be  clearly  apprehended. 
The  epithet  poor  has  a  far  wider  range  of  application 
than  among  the  lower  orders  of  the  community.  We 
may  speak,  and  speak  rightly,  of  a  poor  nobleman,  or  a 
poor  bishop,  or  a  poor  baronet.  It  is  enough  to  bring 
down  the  epithet  on  any  individual  that  out  of  his  earn- 
ings or  property  he  is  not  able  to  maintain  himself  in 
the  average  style  of  comfort  that  obtains  throughout  the 
class  of  society  to  which  he  belongs.  The  earl  who  can- 
not afford  a  carriage,  and  the  laborer  who  cannot  afford 
the  fare  and  the  clothing  of  our  general  peasantry,  how- 
ever different  their  claims  to  our  sympathy  may  be,  by 
being  currently  termed  poor  are  both  made  to  share  alike 
in  this  designation. 

188 


CHRISTIAN   ECONOMY   AND   PAUPERISM  189 

To  be  poor  is  primarily  to  be  in  want;  and  even 
though  the  want  should  be  surely  provided  for  by  the 
kindness  of  neighbors,  yet  is  the  epithet  still  made  to 
rest  on  the  individual  who  originally  wore  it.  ... 
The  condition  of  poverty,  arising  from  a  defect  of  power 
or  of  means  on  the  part  of  him  who  occupies  it,  will 
ever,  we  apprehend,  be  a  frequent  circumstance  in  so- 
ciety; while  the  wants  of  poverty,  arising  from  a  defect 
in  the  care  of  relatives  or  in  the  humanity  of  friends  and 
observers,  will,  we  trust,  at  length  be  exclusively  done 
away.  .  . 

A  poor  man  is  a  man  in  want  of  adequate  means  for 
his  own  subsistence.  A  pauper  is  a  man  who  lias  this 
want  supplemented,  in  whole  or  part,  out  of  a  legal  or 
compulsory  provision.  He  would  not  be  a  pauper  by 
having  the  whole  want  supplied  to  him  out  of  the  kind- 
ness of  neighbors,  or  from  the  gratuitous  allowance  of 
an  old  master,  or  from  any  of  the  sources  of  voluntary 
charity.  It  is  by  having  relief  legally  awarded  to 
him,  out  of  money  legally  raised,  that  he  becomes  a 
pauper.  .  . 

[This  definition  of  pauperism  calls  attention  to  the 
merely  external  legal  relation.  It  does  not  suggest  that 
deep  physical  and  spiritual  degradation  which  marks 
great  numbers  as  a  broken  and  degenerate  class,  para- 
sites, and  beggars.  In  this  deeper  sense  many  who  re- 
ceive legal  aid  are  not  paupers  (in  character),  and  some 
who  are  supported  by  friends  are  actually  paupers — some 
even  in  rich  and  respectable  families.  This  distinction 
goes  deeper  than  the  discussion  of  Chalmers,  and  is 
brought  out  by  biology  and  anthropology.] 


190  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

But  the  truth  is  that  the  invention  of  pauperism,  had 
it  been  successful,  would  have  gone  to  annihilate  the 
state  of  poverty  as  well  as  its  sufferings.  A  man  cannot 
be  called  poor  who  has  a  legal  right,  on  the  moment 
that  he  touches  the  borders  of  indigence,  to  demand  that 
his  descending  progress  shall  be  arrested  and  he  shall 
be  upheld  in  a  sufficiency  of  aliment  for  himself  and  his 
family.  The  law,  in  fact,  has  vested  him  with  a  prop- 
erty in  the  land  which  he  can  turn  to  account  so  soon 
as  he  treads  on  the  confines  of  poverty;  and  had  this 
desire  been  as  effective  as  was  hoped  and  intended,  a 
state  of  poverty  would  have  been  impossible.  .  .  . 
The  truth  is  that  pauperism  has  neither  done  away  the 
condition  of  poverty  nor  alleviated  the  evils  of  it.  This 
attempt  of  legislation  to  provide  all  with  a  right  of  pro- 
tection from  the  miseries  of  want  has  proved  vain  and 
impotent,  and  leaves  a  strong  likelihood  behind  it  that 
a  more  real  protection  would  have  been  afforded  had  the 
case  been  abandoned  to  the  unforced  sympathies  of  our 
nature,  and  had  it  been  left  to  human  compassion  to 
soften  the  wretchedness  of  a  state  against  the  existence 
of  which  no  artifice  of  human  policy  seems  to  be  at  all 
available. 

[While  the  influences  of  Christian  faith  are  very 
helpful  in  stimulating  private  benevolence  and  redeem- 
ing the  poor  from  degrading  habits  of  dependence,  yet 
the  mere  abolition  of  a  legal  provision  for  poverty  would 
be  enough  of  itself  to  call  forth  the  charity  of  the  pros- 
perous and  the  resources  of  self-help  among  the  un- 
fortunate.] 


CHRISTIAN   ECONOMY   AND   PAUPERISM  191 

The  first,  and  by  far  the  most  productive  of  these 
fountains,  is  situated  among  the  habits  and  economies 
of  the  people  themselves.  It  is  impossible  but  that  an 
established  system  of  pauperism  must  induce  a  great 
relaxation  on  the  frugality  and  providential  habits  of  our 
laboring  classes.  It  is  impossible  but  that  it  must  un- 
dermine the  incentives  to  accumulation,  and,  by  leading 
the  people  to  repose  that  interest  on  a  public  provision 
which  would  else  have  been  secured  by  the  effects  of 
their  own  prudence  and  their  own  carefulness,  it  has 
dried  up  far  more  abundant  resources  in  one  quarter 
than  it  has  opened  in  another.  We  know  not  a  more 
urgent  principle  of  our  constitution  than  self-preserva- 
tion; and  it  is  a  principle  which  not  only  shrinks  from 
present  suffering,  but  which  looks  onward  to  futurity 
and  holds  up  a  defence  against  the  apprehended  wants 
and  difficulties  of  the  years  that  are  to  come.  Were  the 
great  reservoir  of  public  charity  for  the  town  at  large 
to  be  shut,  there  would  soon  be  struck  out  many  family 
reservoirs,  fed  by  the  thrift  and  sobriety  which  necessity 
would  then  stimulate,  but  which  now  the  system  of  pau- 
perism so  long  has  superseded;  and  from  these  there 
would  emanate  a  more  copious  supply  than  is  at  present 
ministered  out  of  poor  rates  to  aliment  the  evening  of 
plebeian  life  and  to  equalize  all  the  vicissitudes  of  its 
history. 

The  second  fountain  which  pauperism  has  a  tendency 
to  shut,  and  which  its  abolition  would  reopen,  is  the 
kindness  of  relatives.  One  of  the  most  palpable,  and  at 
the  same  time  most  grievous,  effects  of  this  artificial 


192  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

system  is  the  dissipation  which  it  has  made  of  the  ties 
and  feelings  of  relationship.  It  is  this  which  gives  rise 
to  the  melancholy  list  of  runaway  parents,  wherewith 
whole  columns  of  the  provincial  newspapers  of  England 
are  oftentimes  filled.  And  then,  as  if  in  retaliation, 
there  is  the  cruel  abandonment  of  parents  by  their  own 
offspring  to  the  cold  and  reluctant  hand  of  public 
charity. 

A  third  fountain  on  which  pauperism  has  set  one  of 
its  strongest  seals,  and  which  would  instantly  be  un- 
locked on  the  abolition  of  the  system,  is  the  sympathy 
of  the  wealthier  for  the  poorer  classes  of  society.  It 
has  transformed  the  whole  character  of  charity  by  turn- 
ing a  matter  of  love  into  a  matter  of  litigation,  and  so 
has  seared  and  shut  many  a  heart  out  of  which  the  spon- 
taneous emanations  of  good-will  would  have  gone  plenti- 
fully forth  among  the  abodes  of  the  destitute.  We  know 
not  how  a  more  freezing  arrest  can  be  laid  on  the  cur- 
rent of  benevolence  than  when  it  is  met  in  the  tone  of 
a  rightful  and,  perhaps,  indignant  demand  for  that 
wherewith  it  was  ready,  on  its  own  proper  impulse,  to 
pour  refreshment  and  relief  over  the  whole  field  of  as- 
certained wretchedness.  There  is  a  mighty  difference 
of  effect  between  an  imperative  and  an  imploring  ap- 
plication. The  one  calls  out  the  jealousy  of  our  nature 
and  puts  us  upon  the  attitude  of  surly  and  determined 
resistance.  The  other  calls  out  the  compassion  of  our 
nature  and  inclines  us  to  the  free  and  willing  movements 
of  generosity.  . 

But  there  is  still  another  fountain  that  we  hold  to  be 


CHRISTIAN   ECONOMY   AND   PAUPERISM  193 

greatly  more  productive  even  than  the  last,  both  in  re- 
spect to  the  amount  of  relief  that  is  yielded  by  it  and  also 
in  respect  to  the  more  fit  and  timely  accommodation 
wherewith  it  suits  itself  to  the  ever  varying  accidents 
and  misfortunes  of  our  common  humanity.  There  is  a 
local  distance  between  the  wealthy  and  the  poor  which 
is  unfavorable  to  the  operation  of  the  last  fountain,  but 
this  is  amply  compensated  in  the  one  we  are  about  to 
specify; — and  some  may  be  surprised  when  we  intimate 
that  of  far  superior  importance  to  the  sympathy  of  the 
rich  for  the  poor  do  we  hold  to  be  the  sympathy  of  the 
poor  for  one  another.  In  the  veriest  depths  of  unmixed 
and  extended  plebeianism,  and  where,  for  many  streets 
together,  not  one  house  is  to  be  seen  which  indicates 
more  than  the  rank  of  a  common  laborer,  are  there  feel- 
ings of  mutual  kindness  and  capabilities  of  mutual  aid 
that  greatly  outstrip  the  conceptions  of  a  hurried  and 
superficial  observer.  And  but  for  pauperism,  which  has 
released  immediate  neighbors  from  the  feeling  they 
would  otherwise  have  had,  that  in  truth  the  most  im- 
portant benefactors  of  the  poor  are  the  poor  themselves, 
there  had  been  a  busy  internal  operation  of  charity  in 
these  crowded  lanes  and  densely  peopled  recesses  that 
would  have  proved  a  more  effectual  guarantee  against 
the  starvation  of  any  individual  than  ever  can  be 
reared  by  any  of  the  artifices  of  human  policy.  One 
who  has  narrowly  looked  to  some  of  these  vicinities  and 
witnessed  the  small  but  numerous  contributions  that 
pour  in  upon  a  family  whose  distresses  have  attracted 
observation,  and  seen  how  food,  and  service,  and  fuel 
13 


194  CHKISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

are  rendered  in  littles  from  neighbors  that  have  been 
drawn,  by  a  kind  of  moral  gravitation,  to  the  spot  where 
disease  and  destitution  hold  out  their  most  impressive 
aspect;  and  has  arithmetic  withal  for  comparing  the 
amount  of  these  unnoticed  items  with  the  whole  produce 
of  that  more  visible  beneficence  which  is  imported  from 
abroad  and  scattered  by  the  hand  of  affluence  over  the 
district — we  say  that  such  an  observer  will  be  sure  to 
conclude  that,  after  all,  the  best  safeguards  against  the 
horrors  of  extreme  poverty  have  been  planted  by  the 
hand  of  nature  in  the  very  region  of  poverty  itself; 
that  the  numerous  though  scanty  rivulets,  which  have 
their  rise  within  its  confines,  do  more  for  the  refresh- 
ment of  its  more  desolate  places  than  would  the  broad 
streams  that  may  be  sent  forth  upon  it  from  the  great 
reservoir  of  pauperism.  .  .  .  Should  pauperism  be 
abolished,  let  but  humanity  abide  in  all  the  wonted  at- 
tributes and  sympathies  which  belong  to  her,  and  we  may 
be  sure  that  for  the  supplies  which  issued  from  the  store- 
house of  public  charity  there  would  be  ample  compen- 
sation in  the  breaking  out  of  those  manifold  lesser  chari- 
ties that  never  fail  to  be  evolved  when  human  suffering 
is  brought  into  contact  with  human  observation.  .  .  . 

[This  word  "  observation  "  suggests  one  of  the  strong- 
est objections  to  Chalmer's  method.  The  rich  do  not 
live  near  the  poor,  do  not  observe  them,  do  not  know  or 
feel  their  sufferings,  and  so  escape  the  appeal  of  visible 
misery.  Therefore  an  undue  and  unjust  part  of  the  bur- 
den of  relief  would  fall  precisely  where  the  resources  are 
feeblest,  on  the  poor  neighbors.  The  present-day  charity 


CHRISTIAN   ECONOMY    AND   PAUPERISM  195 

organization  societies  and  social  settlements  are  aware  of 
this  difficulty,  and  seek  to  meet  it,  at  least  in  part,  by  a 
system  of  friendly  visiting  and  actual  residence  among 
the  poor.  The  "  principle  of  locality,"  especially  in  very 
large  cities,  must  not  be  carried  to  an  absurd  extreme.  To 
the  touching  illustration  of  noble  kindness  in  humble 
places  may  be  added  the  fine  passages  in  Charles  Simmer's 
oration,  "  The  True  Grandeur  of  Nations."] 

There  is  a  statement  made  by  Mr.  Buxton,  in  his 
valuable  work  upon  prisons,  which  is  strongly  illustrative 
of  the  force  of  human  sympathy.  In  the  jail  of  Bristol, 
the  allowance  of  bread  to  the  criminals  is  beneath  the 
fair  rate  of  human  subsistence,  and  to  the  debtors  there 
is  no  allowance  at  all,  leaving  these  last  to  be  provided 
for  by  their  own  proper  resources  or  by  the  random 
charity  of  the  town.  It  has  occasionally  happened  that 
both  these  securities  have  failed  them,  and  that  some  of 
their  number  would  inevitably  have  perished  of  hunger 
had  not  the  criminals,  rather  than  endure  the  spectacle 
of  so  much  agony,  given  a  part  of  their  own  scanty  al- 
lowance, and  so  shared  in  the  suffering  along  with  them. 
It  is  delightful  to  remark  that  the  sympathy  of  humble 
life,  instead  of  the  frail  and  imaginative  child  of  poetry, 
is  a  plant  of  such  sturdy  endurance  as  to  survive  even 
the  roughest  of  those  processes  by  which  a  human  being 
is  conducted  to  the  last  stages  of  depravity.  Now  if  the 
working  of  this  good  principle  may  thus  be  detected 
among  the  veriest  outcasts  of  human  society,  shall  we 
confide  nothing  to  its  operation  among  the  people  and 
the  families  of  ordinary  life?  .  .  . 


196  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

It  will  be  seen,  then,  that  we  do  not  hold  a  good  Chris- 
tian economy  to  be  indispensable  to  the  negation  of  pau- 
perism. We  think  that  simply  upon  the  absence  of  this 
system  from  any  country  there  will  be  in  it  less  of  un- 
relieved poverty  than  when  the  system  is  in  full  estab- 
lishment and  operation.  .  .  . 

[For  the  actual  facts  in  respect  to  suffering  under  the 
voluntary  and  under  the  legal  systems  in  Great  Britain, 
see  Lamond,  "  The  Scottish  Poor  Laws."  Chalmers 
seemed  to  be  unable  to  consider  legal  relief  as  a  true 
expression  of  the  benevolence  of  a  community.] 

We  cannot  affirm  that  never  in  any  instance  would 
there  be  a  remainder  of  want  unprovided  for,  but  we 
are  strongly  persuaded  that  it  would  fall  infinitely  short 
of  the  want  which  is  now  unreached  and  unrelieved  by 
all  the  ministrations  of  legalized  charity.  And  we  reckon 
that  this  argument  would  hold,  even  apart  from  Chris- 
tianity, on  the  mere  play  of  those  natural  principles  of 
self-preservation  and  social  and  relative  sympathy  which 
are  inseparable  from  the  human  constitution.  So  that 
in  Constantinople  the  condition  of  the  people  would  be 
economically  worse  were  pauperism  introduced  among 
them,  and  in  London  the  condition  of  the  people  would, 
at  this  moment,  have  been  economically  better  had  pau- 
perism never  been  instituted.  .  .  .  There  may  occur 
a  very  rare  instance  of  positive  starvation ;  but  let  it  never 
be  forgotten  that  instances  also  occur  in  the  British  me- 
tropolis, and  we  do  think  it  more  likely  to  happen  there 
just  because  of  pauperism,  which  has  substituted  the  tardy 


CHEISTIAN   ECONOMY  AND   PAUPERISM  197 

and  circuitous  process  of  a  court  of  administration  for 
the  prompt  and  timely  compassions  of  an  immediate 
neighborhood. 

But  though  it  were  utterly  misconceiving  the  truth 
and  philosophy  of  the  whole  subject  to  affirm  that  Chris- 
tianity was  indispensable,  yet  there  is  a  way  in  which 
it  acts  as  an  element  of  mighty  power  and  importance  in 
this  department  of  human  affairs.  It  is  most  true  that 
nature,  when  simply  left  to  the  development  of  her  own 
spontaneous  and  inborn  principles,  will  render  a  better 
service  to  humanity  than  can  be  done  by  the  legal  charity 
of  England;  but  it  is  also  true  that  Christianity  urges 
this  development  still  further,  and  so  gives  an  augment- 
ed and  overpassing  sufficiency  to  nature.  .  .  .  The 
man  who  is  a  Christian  will  be  the  most  ready  to  labor 
with  his  own  hands  rather  than  be  burdensome;  and,  if 
he  have  dependent  relatives,  he  will  be  the  most  ready 
to  provide  for  those  of  his  own  house  and  of  his  own 
kindred ;  and,  if  he  be  rich,  he  will  be  the  most  willing 
to  distribute  and  ready  to  communicate;  and,  if  he  be 
poor,  still,  with  his  humble  mite,  will  he  aspire  after  the 
blessing  that  is  promised  to  a  giver,  and  shun,  to  the  utter- 
most, the  condition  of  a  receiver.  Christianity  does  not 
originate  the  principles  in  society,  but  Christianity  adds 
prodigiously  to  the  power  and  intenseness  of  their 
operation.  .  .  . 

We  have,  under  a  good  parochial  economy,  other  and 
perhaps  more  powerful  securities  for  an  ample  compen- 
sation being  rendered  to  human  want  should  pauperism 
be  done  away.  Out  of  the  mingling  and  acquaintance- 


198  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

ship  that  would  ensue  among  the  various  orders  of  so- 
ciety, there  were  a  greatly  more  honorable  feeling  that 
would  arise  in  the  breasts  of  the  poor  and  uphold  them 
in  their  generous  stand  against  the  humiliations  of  public 
charity.  The  homage  rendered  to  the  dignity  of  each 
household  by  the  annual  presence  of  the  minister,  and 
the  more  frequent  visitations  of  his  parochial  agents, 
were  not  without  its  efficacy  in  rearing  a  preventive  bar- 
rier to  stop  the  descent  and  the  degradation  of  many 
families.  When  the  rich  go  forth  on  a  plebeian  terri- 
tory, in  the  ostensible  capacity  of  almoners,  we  are 
aware  what  the  character  of  that  stout  and  clamorous 
reaction  is  which  is  sure  to  come  back  upon  them.  But 
let  them  go  forth  on  those  topics  of  our  common  nature 
which  tend  to  assimilate  all  the  ranks  of  life;  let  edu- 
cation, or  piety,  or  friendship  be  the  occasion  of  those 
short  but  frequent  interviews,  where  the  inequalities  of 
condition  are  for  the  time  forgotten;  let  Christian 
philanthropy,  for  which  a  right  parochial  apparatus 
would  give  such  ample  scope  and  exercise,  guide  the  foot- 
steps of  our  official  men  to  the  humblest  of  our  city 
habitations,  and  there  suggest,  in  conversation,  all  that 
sense  and  sympathy  can  devise  for  the  immortal  well- 
being  of  the  inmates;  though  these  applications  should 
fail,  in  many  thousand  instances,  of  their  direct  and 
primary  design,  yet  let  them  be  repeated  and  kept  up 
and  one  result  will  be  sure  to  come  out  of  them — a  more 
erect,  and  honorable,  and  high-minded  population,  less 
able  than  before  to  brook  the  exposure  of  their  necessi- 
ties to  the  observation  of  another,  and  more  strenuous 


CHRISTIAN   ECONOMY   AND   PAUPERISM  199 

than  before  in  sustaining  their  respectability  on  that 
loftier  platform  to  which  they  have  been  admitted  by 
the  ennobling  intercourse  of  their  superiors  in  society. 
.  .  .  The  system  of  locality,  when  carried  into  effect, 
not  only  exposes  the  people  to  the  view  of  their  su- 
periors, but  it  exposes  them  more  fully  and  more  fre- 
quently to  the  view  of  each  other.  One  sure  result  of 
this  system  is  that  it  supplies  contiguous  families  with 
common  places  of  resort,  as  the  parish  church  and  the 
parish  schools;  and  furnishes  them  with  objects  of  com- 
mon interest  and  attention,  as  their  minister  or  the 
Sabbath-school  teachers  of  their  children;  and  groups 
the  inhabitants  of  small  vicinities  into  occasional  do- 
mestic assemblages,  as  when  the  minister  performs  his 
annual  round  of  household  ministrations,  or,  under  the 
fostering  care  of  himself  and  his  agents,  the  more  re- 
ligious of  the  district  hold  their  weekly  meetings  for 
the  exercises  of  piety.  It  is  unavoidable  that,  with  such 
processes  as  these,  a  closer  and  more  manifold  acquaint- 
anceship shall  grow  up  in  every  immediate  neighbor- 
hood, and  that  moral  distance  which  now  obtains,  even 
among  families  in  a  state  of  juxtaposition,  shall  be 
greatly  reduced;  and  the  people  will  live  more  under 
the  view  and  within  the  observation  of  the  little  be- 
setting public  wherewith  the  ties  of  fellowship  are  now 
more  strengthened  and  multiplied  than  before;  and  this, 
independently  of  all  Christian  and  all  civic  virtue,  will 
bring  the  natural  pride  of  character  into  alliance  with 
those  various  habits  which  go  to  counteract  the  vice  and 
the  misery  of  pauperism.  The  consciousness  of  a  nearer 


200  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

and  more  impending  regard  than  is  now  directed  toward 
them  would  make  them  all  more  resolute  to  shun  the 
degradation  of  charity  and  the  obloquy  they  would  in- 
cur by  a  shameful  abandonment  of  their  relatives,  and 
even  that  certain  stigma  which  would  be  affixed  to  them 
were  the  liberality  of  some  open-hearted  neighbor  eulo- 
gized in  their  hearing  and  they  felt  themselves  to  suffer 
by  the  comparison.  .  .  . 

There  is  an  utter  inadvertency  to  the  laws  of  our  uni- 
versal nature  on  the  part  of  those  who  think  that  in 
the  humblest  circles  of  plebeianism  there  is  not  the 
operation  of  the  very  same  principles  which  may  be  wit- 
nessed in  the  higher  circles  of  fashionable  life.  There 
is  a  style  of  manner  and  appearance  that  is  admired 
among  the  poor,  and  which,  when  introduced  by  one  of 
the  families,  constitutes  it  the  leader  of  a  fashion  that 
is  apt  to  be  emulated  by  all  the  others.  There  is  a  cer- 
tain bon  ton  by  which  the  average  feeling  of  every 
district  is  represented;  and  nothing  contributes  more 
powerfully  to  raise  it  than  the  residence  of  an  individual 
whose  attention  to  the  duties  of  his  station  has  kept  him 
nobly  and  manfully  afloat  above  the  degradations  of 
charity.  The  infection  of  such  an  example  spreads 
among  the  neighbors.  What  he  shuns  from  principle 
they  spurn  at  from  pride;  and  thus  the  very  envies  and 
jealousies  of  the  human  heart  go  to  augment  our  con- 
fidence, that  should  the  economy  of  pauperism  in  our 
cities  give  place  to  a  right  Christian  economy  there  will, 
in  the  spirit  and  capabilities  of  the  people  themselves, 
be  an  ample  compensation  for  all  that  is  withdrawn  from 
them. 


CHRISTIAN    ECONOMY   AND    PAUPERISM  201 

We  are  most  thoroughly  aware  of  the  incredulity 
wherewith  all  such  statements  are  listened  to  by  men 
hackneyed  among  the  details  of  official  business,  and  who 
hold  every  argument  that  is  couched  in  general  language, 
and  is  drawn  from  the  principles  of  human  nature,  to 
be  abstract  and  theoretical.  But  they  should  be  taught 
that  their  institutional  experience  is  not  the  experience 
which  throws  any  light  upon  the  real  and  original  merits 
of  this  question;  that  though  they  have  been  working 
for  years,  with  their  fingers,  among  the  accounts  and  the 
manipulations  of  city  pauperism,  their  eyes  may  never, 
all  the  while,  have  been  upon  the  only  relevant  field  of 
observation;  that,  practitioners  though  they  be,  it  is  not 
at  all  in  the  tract  of  their  deliberations  or  their  doings 
where  true  practical  wisdom  is  to  be  gotten;  that  the 
likeliest  counsellor  upon  this  subject  is  not  the  man  who 
has  travelled,  however  long  and  laboriously,  over  the 
inner  department  of  committeeship,  but  the  man  who 
travels,  and  that  on  an  errand  distinct  from  common 
charity,  over  the  outer  department  of  the  actual  and 
living  population.  In  one  word,  a  local  Sabbath  teacher, 
with  ordinary  shrewdness  of  observation,  and  who  meets 
the  people  free  of  all  that  disguise  which  is  so  readily 
assumed  on  every  occasion  of  mercenary  intercourse  be- 
tween them  and  their  superiors,  from  him  would  we  ex- 
pect a  greatly  sounder  deliverance  than  from  the  mere 
man  of  place  or  of  penmanship,  on  the  adequacy  of  the 
lower  orders  to  their  own  comfort  and  their  own  inde- 
pendence. It  is  a  sufficient  reply  to  the  charge  of  san- 
guine or  visionary,  which  is  so  often  advanced  against 


202  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

our  confident  affirmations  upon  this  topic,  that  we  invite 
the  testimonies  of  .all  those  with  whom  a  district  of 
plebeianism  is  the  scene  of  their  daily,  or  at  least  fre- 
quent, visitations.  .  .  . 

[He  then  shows,  from  actual  trial  in  certain  poor  par- 
ishes of  Glasgow,  that  his  plan  of  appealing  to  the  re- 
sources of  the  poor  had  been  successful  among  Sabbath- 
school  teachers.  He  urges  that  "  pauperism  "  stands  in 
the  way  of  the  moral  ends  of  the  Church.] 

It  is,  indeed,  a  heavy  incumbrance  on  the  work  of  a 
clergyman,  whose  office  it  is  to  substitute  among  his  peo- 
ple the  graces  of  a  new  character  for  the  hardness,  and 
the  selfishness,  and  the  depraved  tendencies  of  nature, 
that,  in  addition  to  the  primary  and  essential  evils  of  the 
human  constitution,  he  has  to  struggle,  in  his  holy  war- 
fare, against  a  system  so  replete  as  pauperism  is,  with 
all  that  can  minister  to  the  worst  or  that  can  wither  up 
the  best  affections  of  our  species. 

[The  connection  between  moral  regeneration  and  the 
outward  institutions  of  society  he  further  illustrates  from 
the  example  of  the  excise  laws  which  fostered  smuggling 
among  a  people  normally  honest  and  upright.  Merely 
by  abolishing  the  tax,  or  by  an  important  reduction  of  it, 
this  crime  would  disappear.  Ultra-spiritualists  overlook 
the  fact  that  character  is  influenced  by  bad  institutions.] 

We  hold  pauperism  to  be  a  still  more  deadly  antag- 
onist to  the  morality  of  our  nation,  .  .  .  holding 
forth  a  cup  of  seeming  bounty,  but  which  is  charged 


CHRISTIAN    ECONOMY   AND   PAUPERISM  203 

with  a  slow  and  insinuating  poison,  wherewith  it  has 
tainted  the  whole  frame  of  society.  .  .  .  It  is  a  fright- 
ful spectacle;  and  the  heart  of  the  Christian  as  well  as 
of  the  civil  philanthropist  ought  to  be  solemnized  by  it. 
He,  of  all  men,  should  not  look  on  with  indifference 
while  the  vapor  of  this  teeming  exhalation  so  thickens 
and  spreads  itself  throughout  the  whole  moral  atmos- 
phere of  our  land.  And  when  he  witnesses  the  fell 
malignity  of  its  operation,  both  on  the  graver  and  more 
amiable  virtues  of  our  nature;  when  he  sees  how  dili- 
gence in  the  callings,  and  economy  in  the  habits,  of  in- 
dividuals are  alike  extinguished  by  it,  and  both  the 
tendernesses  of  relationship  and  the  wider  charities  of 
life  are  chilled  and  overborne,  we  should  expect  of  this 
friend,  to  the  higher  interests  of  our  species,  that  he, 
among  all  his  fellows,  would  be  most  intent  on  the  de- 
struction of  a  system  that  so  nips  the  best  promises  of 
spiritual  cultivation  and  under  the  balefulness  of  whose 
shadow  are  now  withering  into  arid  decay  and  sure  an- 
nihilation the  very  fairest  of  the  fruits  of  righteousness. 


CHAPTER  XI 

ON  THE  BEARING  WHICH  A  RIGHT  CIVIC  ECONOMY  HAS 
UPON  PAUPERISM 

[AFTER  repeating  his  assertion  that  all  public  relief 
is  pernicious,  and  that  charity  should  be  left  to  free 
private  care:] 

The  public  charity  of  Scotland  is  less  pernicious  than 
that  of  England,  only  because  less  wide  in  its  deviation 
from  nature,  and  less  hostile  to  the  operation  of  those 
natural  principles  that  prompt  both  to  the  care  of  self- 
preservation  and  to  the  exercise  of  the  social  and  relative 
humanities  of  life.  .  .  .  The  philanthropists  of  Eng- 
land are  looking  in  the  wrong  quarter  when,  convinced 
of  the  superiority  of  our  system,  they  try  to  discover  it 
in  the  constitution  of  our  courts  of  supply,  or  in  the 
working  and  mechanism  of  that  apparatus  which  they 
regard  as  so  skilfully  adapted  for  the  best  and  fittest 
and  most  satisfying  relief  among  the  destitute.  When 
they  read  of  the  population  of  a  Scottish  parish  upheld 
in  all  the  expenses  of  their  pauperism  for  the  sum  of 
twenty  pounds  yearly,  and  that  in  many  a  parish  of  Eng- 
land the  pauperism  of  an  equal  population  costs  fifteen 
hundred  pounds,  they  naturally  ask  by  what  strenuous- 
ness  of  management  it  is,  or  by  what  sagacious  accom- 

204 


PAUPERISM  205 

modation  of  means  to  an  end,  that  a  thing  ^o  marvellous 
can  be  accomplished.  The  truth  is  that  the  administra- 
tions for  the  poor  in  the  Scottish  parish  are  not  distinctly 
conscious  of  any  great  strenuousness  or  sagacity  in  the 
business.  The  achievement  is  not  due  to  any  manage- 
ment of  theirs,  but  purely  to  the  manageable  nature  of 
the  subject,  which  is  a  population  whose  habits  and  whose 
hopes  are  accommodated  to  a  state  of  matters  where  a 
compulsory  provision  for  the  poor  is  unknown. 

[Allusion  is  made  to  the  Scottish  system  of  relief  by 
the  Kirk-Session  from  funds  g'iven  as  legacies  or  as  col- 
lections at  church  services.  The  claim  is  made  that  the 
destitute  under  the  voluntary  system  are  not  more  nu- 
merous than  where  the  compulsory  tax  system  has  been 
introduced.] 

In  England  the  money  that  is  expended  on  their  poor 
is  not  given,  but  levied.  It  is  raised  by  the  authority 
of  law,  and  the  sum  thus  assessed  upon  each  parish  ad- 
mits of  being  increased  with  the  growing  exigencies  of 
the  people  from  whatever  cause  these  exigencies  may 
have  arisen.  As  the  sure  result  of  such  an  economy  the 
pauperism  of  England  has  swollen  out  to  its  present 
alarming  dimensions;  and,  in  many  instances,  the  ex- 
penditure of  its  parishes  bears  the  proportion  of  a  hun- 
dred to  one  with  the  expenditure  of  those  parishes  in 
Scotland  which  are  equally  populous,  but  which  still  re- 
main under  the  system  of  gratuitous  administration. 

Now,  in  most  of  the  border  parishes  of  Scotland,  as 
well  as  in  many  of  its  large  towns,  there  is  the  conjunc- 


206  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

tion  of  these  two  methods.  There  is  a  fund  raised  by 
voluntary  contributions  at  the  church  doors ;  and,  to  help 
out  the  supposed  deficiencies  of  this,  there  is,  moreover, 
a  fund  raised  by  legal  assessment.  We  can  thus,  in 
Great  Britain,  have  the  advantage  of  beholding  pauper- 
ism in  all  its  stages,  from  the  embryo  of  its  first  rudi- 
ments in  a  northern  parish,  through  the  successive  steps 
of  its  progress  as  we  travel  southward,  till  we  arrive  at 
parishes  where  the  property  is  nearly  overborne  by  the 
weight  of  an  imposition  that  is  unknown  in  other  coun- 
tries; and  where,  in  several  instances,  the  property  has 
been  reduced  to  utter  worthlessness,  and  so  been  aban- 
doned. We  can,  at  the  same  time,  the  better  judge  from 
this  varied  exhibition  of  the  effect  of  pauperism  on  the 
comfort  and  character  of  those  for  whose  welfare  it  was 
primarily  instituted. 

[He  recommends  a  gradual  return,  by  successive  steps, 
to  the  former  system  of  voluntary  charity  administered 
by  parish  officers.  After  stating  the  essential  elements 
of  the  new  system,  in  which  all  the  funds  for  districts 
are  heaped  together  in  one  widely  advertised  and  con- 
spicuous treasury,  he  adds:] 

One  evil  consequence  of  thus  uniting  all  the  parishes 
of  a  town  under  the  authority  of  one  general  board  is 
that  it  brings  out  to  greater  ostensibility  the  whole  econ- 
omy of  pauperism,  and  throws  an  air  of  greater  magnifi- 
cence and  power  over  its  administrations.  .  .  .  Pau- 
perism would  become  less  noxious  simply  by  throwing 
it  into  such  a  form  as  might  make  it  less  noticeable. 


PAUPERISM  207 

For  that  relaxation  of  economy,  and  of  the  relative 
duties  which  follows  in  the  train  of  pauperism,  is  not 
the  proportion  of  what  pauperism  yields,  but  of  what  it 
is  expected  to  yield,  and  therefore  it  is  of  so  much  im- 
portance that  it  be  not  set  before  the  eye  of  the  people 
in  such  characters  of  promise  or  of  power  as  might  de- 
ceive them  into  large  and  visionary  expectations.  .  .  . 
And  it  were  well,  not  merely  for  the  purpose  of  moderat- 
ing and  restraining  the  sanguine  arithmetic  of  our  native 
poor,  that  the  before  undivided  pauperism  should  be 
parcelled  out  into  smaller  and  less  observable  jurisdic- 
tions, but  this  would  also  have  the  happy  effect  of  slack- 
ening the  importation  of  poor  from  abroad.  It  is  not 
by  the  actual  produce  of  a  public  charity,  but  by  the 
report  and  semblance  of  it,  that  we  are  to  estimate  its 
effect  in  drawing  to  its  neighborhood  those  expectant 
families  who  are  barely  able  to  subsist  during  the  period 
that  is  required  to  establish  a  legal  residence  and  claim, 
thus  bringing  the  most  injurious  competition,  not  merely 
on  the  charity  itself,  but  overstocking  the  market  with 
laborers,  and  so  causing  a  hurtful  depression  on  the  gen- 
eral comfort  of  our  operative  population. 

But,  secondly,  the  more  wide  the  field  of  superin- 
tendence is,  the  greater  must  be  the  moral  distance  be- 
tween the  administrators  of  the  charity  and  its  recipients. 
A  separate  and  independent  agency  for  each  parish  are 
in  likelier  circumstances  for  a  frequent  intercourse  and 
acquaintanceship  with  the  people  of  their  own  peculiar 
charge  than  are  the  members  and  office-bearers  of  a  great 
municipal  institution  for  the  poor  of  a  whole  city.  .  .  . 


208  CHRISTIAN   AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

The  dispensers  of  relief,  oppressed  by  the  weight  and 
multiplicity  of  applications,  and  secretly  conscious,  at 
the  same  time,  of  their  inability  to  discern  aright  into 
the  merit  and  necessity  of  each  of  them,  are  apt  to  take 
refuge  either  in  an  indiscriminate  facility,  which  will 
refuse  nothing,  or  in  an  indiscriminate  resistance,  which 
will  suffer  nothing  but  clamors  and  importunities  to 
overbear  it.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  claimants  for 
relief,  whom  the  minute  inquiries  of  a  parochial  agent 
could  easily  have  repressed,  or  his  mild  representations 
and,  perhaps,  friendly  attentions  could  easily  have  satis- 
fied .  .  .  they  feel  no  such  delicacies  toward  the  mem- 
bers of  a  stately  and  elevated  board  before  whom  they  have 
preferred  their  stout  demand,  and,  in  safety  from  whose 
prying  and  patient  inspection,  they  can  make  the  hardy 
asseveration  both  of  their  necessities  and  of  their  rights. 
No  power  of  scrutiny  or  of  guardianship  can  make  com- 
pensation for  this  disadvantage.  No  multiplication  what- 
ever of  agents  and  office-bearers  on  the  part  of  the  great 
city  establishment  can  raise  the  barrier  of  such  an  ef- 
fectual vigilance  against  unworthy  applications,  as  is 
simply  provided  by  the  ecclesiastical  police  of  a  parish, 
whose  espionage  is  the  fruit  of  a  fair  and  frequent  inter- 
course with  the  families  and  can  carry  no  jealousies  or 
heart-burnings  along  with  it.  The  sure  consequence  of 
those  intimate  and  repeated  minglings  which  take  place 
between  the  people  of  a  parish  and  its  deacons  and  elders 
is  that  a  growing  shame  on  the  one  side  will  prevent 
many  applications  which  would  else  have  been  made, 
and  that  a  growing  command  on  the  other  over  all  the 


PAUPERISM  2U9 

details  and  difficulties  of  humble  life  will  lead  to  the 
easy  disposal  of  many  more  applications  which  would 
else  have  been  acceded  to.  There  may,  in  fact,  be  such 
a  close  approximation  to  the  poor  on  the  part  of  local 
overseers  as  will  bring  within  their  view  those  natural 
and  antecedent  capabilities  for  their  relief  and  sus- 
tenance that  ought,  we  think,  to  have  superseded  the 
ministrations  of  pauperism  altogether.  By  urging  the 
applicant  to  spirit  and  strenuousness  in  his  own  cause, 
or  by  remonstrating  with  those  of  his  own  kindred,  or 
by  the  statement  of  his  case  to  neighbors,  or,  finally,  if 
he  thought  it  worthy  of  such  an  exertion,  by  interesting 
a  wealthy  visitor  in  his  behalf,  may  the  Christian  friend 
of  his  manageable  district  easily  bring  down  a  sufficiency 
for  all  its  wants  from  those  fountains  of  supply  which 
were  long  at  work  ere  pauperism  was  invented,  and  will 
again  put  forth  their  activity  after  pauperism  is  de- 
stroyed. 

But  these  fountains  are  too  deep  and  internal  for  the 
observation  of  legal  or  general  overseers,  nor  could  they 
bring  them  to  act  though  they  would  on  the  chaos  of 
interminable  and  widely  scattered  applications  that  come 
before  them.  In  these  circumstances  they  have  no  other 
resource  than  to  meet  them  legally,  which  is  tantamount, 
in  the  vast  majority  of  instances,  to  meeting  them  com- 
batively. .  .  .  The  sure  result  of  every  additional 
expenditure  through  the  channels  of  an  artificial  pau- 
perism do  we  behold  the  rich  more  desperate  of  doing  ef- 
fectual good,  and  the  poor  more  dissatisfied  with  all  that 
is  done  than  before.  .  .  . 
14 


210  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

The  third  objection  against  the  system  of  a  general 
superintendence  over  the  pauperism  of  all  the  parishes, 
and  of  a  general  fund  out  of  which  each  shall  draw  for 
its  own  expenditure:  The  imagination  of  a  mighty  and 
inexhaustible  fund  is  not  more  sure  to  excite  the  appe- 
tite, and  so  to  relax  the  frugal  and  providential  habits  of 
its  receivers,  than  it  is  sure  to  relax  the  vigilance  of  its 
dispensers.  To  leave  to  each  Session  the  right  of  sitting 
in  judgment  over  the  cases  of  its  own  parochial  appli- 
cants, after  having  wrested  from  it  its  own  peculiar 
revenue,  and  then  to  deal  forth  upon  it  from  a  joint 
stock  such  supplies  of  money  as  it  may  require  for  its 
expenditure,  is  the  most  likely  arrangement  that  could 
have  been  devised  for  establishing  in  each  parish  a  most 
lax  and  careless  and  improvident  administration.  .  .  . 
If  we  wish  to  see,  in  the  business  of  a  Kirk-Session, 
somewhat  of  the  same  alertness  and  quick-sightedness 
and  patient  attention  wherewith  an  individual  in  private 
life  looks  after  the  business  of  his  private  affairs,  we 
must  throw  it  upon  its  own  resources,  and  so  leave  it  to 
square  its  own  outgoings  by  its  own  incomings.  It  is 
not  in  human  nature  that  any  one  corporation  can  be 
so  tender  of  the  funds  of  another  as  it  would  be  of  its 
own;  nor  is  there  a  more  effectual  method  of  encourag- 
ing, in  one  set  of  administrators,  a  facility  in  the  ad- 
mission of  new  cases  than  to  place  with  another  set  of 
administrators  the  fund  for  supplying  them. 

[After  reasserting  his  belief  that  natural  forces  would 
care  for  all  necessary  relief,  he  turns  from  general  theory 
to  a  particular  experience  with  the  local  system:] 


PAUPERISM  211 

It  were  far  more  satisfactory  that  the  thing  be 
tried  than  that  the  thing  be  argued.  .  .  .  It  is  on 
this  account  that  we  feel  disposed  to  estimate  at  so  high 
a  value  the  experience  of  Glasgow;  nor  are  we  aware 
of  any  given  space  on  the  whole  domain,  at  least  of 
1  Scottish  pauperism,  where  a  touchstone  so  delicate  and 
decisive  of  the  question  could  possibly  be  applied;  and 
we  are  most  confidently  persuaded  that  if  the  progress  of 
this  city  toward  the  English  system  could  possibly  be 
arrested  then  it  may  also  be  arrested  with  equal  or 
greater  facility  in  any  parish  of  Scotland,  judging  that 
to  be  indeed  an  experimentum  crucis  which  is  made 
with  such  materials  as  an  exclusively  manufacturing 
population,  and  at  such  a  time  too  as  that  of  the  great- 
est adversity  which  the  trade  of  the  place  had  ever  to 
sustain  in  the  history  of  its  many  fluctuations. 

But  it  will  be  necessary  to  premise  a  short  general 
account  of  the  method  in  which  its  pauperism  wont  to 
be  administered. 

Each  parish  is  divided  into  districts,  called  propor- 
tions, over  which  an  elder  is  appointed,  whose  business 
it  is  to  receive  from  the  people  belonging  to  it,  and  who 
are  induced  to  become  paupers,  their  first  applications 
for  public  relief.  The  fund,  which  principally  arises 
from  the  free-will  offerings  that  are  collected  weekly 
at  the  church  doors  of  the  different  parishes,  is  kept 
distinct  from  the  fund  that  arises  out  of  the  legal  as- 
sessments; so  that  when  any  application  was  made  to 
the  elder  from  his  district,  he  had  to  judge  whether  the 
case  was  of  so  light  a  nature  as  that  it  could  be  met 


212  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

and  provided  for  out  of  the  first  and  smallest  of  these 
funds,  or  whether  it  was  a  case  of  such  magnitude  as 
justified  the  immediate  transmission  of  it  to  the  admin- 
istration of  the  second  fund.  It  so  happens  that,  except- 
ing on  rare  occasions,  the  primary  applications  for  relief 
are  brought  upon  the  fund  raised  by  collections,  and 
therefore  come,  in  the  first  instance,  under  the  cogni- 
zance and  control  of  the  Kirk-Session  of  that  parish  out 
of  which  the  applications  have  arisen.  So  that  generally 
at  the  first  stage  in  the  history  of  the  pauper  he  stands 
connected  with  the  Kirk-Session  to  which  he  belongs  and 
is  enrolled  as  one  of  their  paupers  at  the  monthly  allow- 
ance of  from  two  to  five  shillings. 

It  is  here,  however,  proper  to  remark  that  the  differ- 
ent Kirk-Sessions  did  not  retain  their  own  proper  col- 
lections for  a  fund  out  of  which  they  might  issue  their 
own  proper  disbursements,  but  that  all  the  collections 
were  thrown  into  one  mass,  subject  to  the  control  of  a 
body  of  administrators,  named  the  General  Session,  and 
made  up  of  all  the  members  of  all  the  separate  sessions 
of  the  city.  From  this  reservoir,  thus  fed  by  weekly 
parochial  contributions,  there  issued  back  again  such 
monthly  supplies  upon  each  subordinate  Session  as  the 
General  Session  judged  to  be  requisite,  on  such  regard 
being  had,  as  they  were  disposed  to  give  to  the  number 
and  necessities  of  those  poor  that  were  actually  on,  the 
roll  of  each  parish.  So  that  in  as  far  as  the  administra- 
tion of  the  voluntary  fund  for  charity  was  concerned, 
it  was  conducted  according  to  a  system  that  had  all  the 
vices  which  we  have  already  tried  to  enumerate,  and  the 


PAUPERISM  213 

mischief  of  which  was  scarcely  alleviated  by  the  occa- 
sional scrutinies  that  were  made  under  the  authority  of 
the  General  Session  for  the  purpose  of  purifying  and 
reducing  the  rolls  of  all  that  pauperism  which  lay  within 
the  scope  of  their  jurisdiction. 

But  we  have  already  stated  that  even  in  the  first  in- 
stance some  cases  occurred  of  more  aggravated  necessity 
and  distress  than  a  Kirk-Session  felt  itself  able  for  or 
would  venture  to  undertake.  These  were  transmitted 
direct  to  the  Town  Hospital,  a  body  vested  with  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  compulsory  fund,  raised  by  legal 
assessment  throughout  the  city  for  the  purpose  of  sup- 
plementing that  revenue  which  is  gathered  at  the  church 
door  and  which,  with  a  few  trifling  additions  from  other 
sources,  constitutes  the  sole  public  aliment  of  the  poor 
in  the  great  majority  of  our  Scottish  parishes.  There 
were  only,  however,  a  small  number  who  found  their 
way  to  the  Town  Hospital  without  taking  their  middle 
passage  to  it  by  the  Kirk-Session;  so  that  the  main  host 
of  that  pauperism  which  made  good  its  entry  on  the 
compulsory  fund  came  not  directly  and  at  once  from  the 
population,  but  through  those  parochial  bodies  of  admin- 
istration for  the  voluntary  fund,  whose  cases,  as  they 
either  multiplied  in  number  or  became  more  aggravated 
in  kind,  were  transferred  from  their  own  rolls  to  those 
of  this  other  institution.  This  transference  took  place 
when  the  largest  sum  awarded  by  the  Session  was  deemed 
not  sufficient  for  the  pauper,  who,  as  he  became  older 
and  more  necessitous,  was  recommended  for  admittance 
on  their  ampler  fund  to  the  weekly  committee  of  the 


214  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

Town  Hospital.  So  that  each  Session  might  have  been 
regarded  as  having  two  doors,  one  of  them  a  door  of 
admittance  from  the  population  who  stand  at  the  mar- 
gin of  pauperism,  and  another  of  them  a  door  of  egress 
to  the  Town  Hospital,  through  which  the  occupiers  of 
the  outer  court  made  their  way  to  the  inner  temple. 
The  Sessions,  in  fact,  were  the  feeders  or  conductors  by 
which  the  Town  Hospital  received  its  pauperism,  that, 
after  lingering  awhile  on  this  path  of  conveyance, 
was  impelled  onward  to  the  farther  extremity,  and 
was  at  length  thrust  into  the  bosom  of  the  wealthier 
institution  by  the  pressure  that  constantly  accumulated 
behind  it. 

[Under  this  system,  which  made  access  to  the  city 
fund  so  easy,  pauperism  trebled  in  a  few  years.  Chal- 
mers thought  that  a  better  way  wTould  be  to  leave  to  each 
district  Session  the  funds  collected  in  its  district  and  to 
make  that  Session  responsible  alone  for  all  its  paupers. 
This  would  simplify  their  duties  and  increase  a  sense 
of  their  responsibility  and  power.  All  the  old  paupers 
would  be  assisted,  until  their  death,  from  the  general 
fund,  and  all  new  cases  would  be  left  to  each  local  parish, 
without  assistance  from  the  wealthy  parishes. 

The  American  reader  will  see  at  once  that  in  our 
cities  this  would  mean  that  the  rich  residents  of  the 
boulevards  would  be  almost  absolutely  freed  from  the 
duty  of  helping  the  families  of  the  dependent  poor,  and 
that  this  system  would  roll  the  entire  burden  upon  those 
who  already  have  enough  to  do  to  keep  the  wolf  from 
entering  their  own  homes.  Evidently  Dr.  Chalmers  be- 
lieved that  the  time  would  soon  come  when  there  would 
be  very  few  of  the  poor  who  would  need  or  ask  for  help, 


PAUPERISM  215 

and  that  the  burden  would  be  comparatively  light.  lie 
expressly  resists  the  suggestion  that  the  rich  parishes 
should  send  of  their  superfluity  to  the  poorer  parishes,  lest 
this  method  should  excite  a  "  rapacious  expectancy  on 
the  part  of  the  people."] 

Pauperism  is  a  bugbear  which  shrinks  and  vanishes 
almost  into  nothing  before  the  touch  of  a  stricter 
inquiry  and  a  closer  personal  intercourse  with  the 
families. 

They  will  find  that  by  every  new  approach  which  they 
make  to  the  subjects  of  their  care  and  guardianship  the 
capabilities  of  the  people  themselves  rise  upon  their  ob- 
servation ;  and  that  every  utterance  which  has  been  made 
about  the  stimulating  and  the  reopening  of  the  natural 
sources  for  the  relief  of  indigence,  in  proportion  to  the 
closing  of  the  artificial  source,  is  the  effusion,  not  of 
fancy,  but  of  experience.  The  task  may  look  a  little 
formidable  to  them  at  its  commencement.  But  they 
may  be  assured  of  the  facility  and  the  pleasure  in  which 
it  will  at  length  terminate,  and  that  clamor  and  discon- 
tent will  subside  among  the  poor,  just  according  as  they 
are  less  allured  from  the  expedients  of  nature  and  Provi- 
dence for  their  relief  by  the  glare  and  the  magnitude  of 
city  institutions.  Along  with  the  humbleness  there  will 
also  soon  be  felt  the  kindliness  of  a  parochial  economy 
after  the  heartless  generalities  of  the  present  system 
have  all  been  broken  up  and  dissipated;  and,  bating  a 
few  outcries  of  turbulence  or  menace,  which  would 
have  been  far  more  frequent  and  more  acrimonious 
under  the  old  economy  than  the  new,  will  every  Kirk- 


216  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

Session  that  enters  fearlessly  upon  the  undertaking 
speedily  make  its  way  to  the  result  of  a  parish  better 
served  and  better  satisfied  than  ever. 

There  is  not  a  parish  so  sunk  in  helplessness  that 
might  not  be  upheld  in  public  charity  on  the  strength 
of  its  own  proper  and  inherent  capabilities.  And  this 
without  harshness;  without  a  tithe  of  those  asperities  and 
heart-burnings  among  the  people  which  are  the  sure  at- 
tendants on  a  profuse  dispensation;  without  the  aspect 
at  all  of  that  repulsive  disdain  which  frowns  on  the  city 
multitude  from  the  great  city  institution. 

[The  author  is  sanguine  that  pauperism  would  melt 
away  in  five  years  or  a  little  more.  He  has  in  mind  a 
parish  where  the  Establishment  is  largely  supported  by 
endowments;  where  there  are  comparatively  few  help- 
less and  enfeebled  families;  and  where  the  people  are 
protected  against  immigration  of  dependents.] 

There  is  only  one  expedient,  the  use  of  which,  on 
every  principle  of  equity  and  fair  self-defence,  must  be 
conceded  to  them.  They  should  be  protected  against 
the  influx  of  poor  from  other  parishes;  and,  if  there  be 
no  law  of  residence  mutually  applicable  to  the  various 
districts  of  the  same  city,  then  it  is  quite  imperative  on 
the  Session  that  is  d-isengaged  from  the  rest  not  to  out- 
strip in  liberality  of  allowance  the  practice  which  ob- 
tains under  that  prior  and  general  management  from 
which  it  has  separated,  else  there  would  be  an  over- 
whelming importation  of  paupers  from  the  contiguous 
places.  .  .  .  With  this  single  proviso,  let  a  de- 


PAUPERISM  217 

tached  and  emancipated  Kirk-Session  go  forth  upon  its 
task,  and  let  it  spare  no  labor  on  the  requisite  investiga- 
tions, and  let  it  ply  all  the  right  expedients  of  prevention, 
the  application  of  which  is  more  for  the  interest  of  the 
claimant  than  for  the  interest  of  the  charitable  fund; 
let  it  examine  not  merely  into  his  own  proper  and  per- 
sonal capabilities,  but  let  it  urge,  and  remonstrate,  and 
negotiate  with  his  relatives  and  friends,  and  lay  down 
upon  himself  the  lessons  of  economy  and  good  conduct- 
in  a  word,  let  it  knock  at  the  gate  of  all  those  natural 
fountains  of  supply  which  we  have  so  often  insisted  on 
as  being  far  more  kindly  and  productive  than  is  the 
artificial  fountain  of  pauperism,  which  it  were  well  for 
the  population  could  it  be  conclusively  sealed  and  shut 
up  altogether;  let  every  attempt,  by  moral  suasion  and 
the  influence  of  a  growing  acquaintanceship  with  the 
families,  be  made  on  the  better  and  more  effective  sources 
for  the  relief  of  want,  ere  the  Session  shall  open  its  own 
door  and  send  forth  supplies  from  its  own  storehouse  on 
the  cases  that  have  been  submitted  to  it;  and  it  will  be 
found,  as  the  result  of  all  this  management,  prosecuted 
in  the  mere  style  of  nature  and  common-sense,  that  the 
people  will  at  once  become  both  more  moderate  in  their 
demands  and,  on  the  whole,  more  satisfied  with  the  new 
administration  under  which  they  have  been  placed.  We 
are  really  not  aware  how  this  question  can  be  brought 
more  closely  and  decisively  to  the  test  of  experiment 
than  by  a  body  of  men  thus  laying  their  immediate 
hand  upon  it;  and,  surely,  it  were  only  equitable  to 
wait  the  trial  and  the  failure  of  such  an  experiment  ere 


218  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  adversaries  of  pauperism  shall  be  denounced  either 
as  unpractised  or  as  unfeeling  spectators. 

[It  may  be  noted  here  that  recent  American  experi- 
ence has  seemed  to  prove  that  Chalmers  was  not  visionary 
or  unfeeling.  Under  the  most  difficult  circumstances, 
with  the  most  concentrated  and  intense  poverty,  several 
great  cities  have  abolished  outdoor  relief  and  have  found 
that  private  charity  was  able  to  care  for  the  poor  more 
tenderly  and  efficiently  than  public  officers.  Reference 
is  made  to  the  cities  of  Brooklyn,  New  York,  and  Phila- 
delphia. And  in  Chicago,  gentlemen  of  high  character 
and  long  experience  in  the  County  Board  have  declared 
that  the  poor  would  be  better  off  if  no  aid  were  given 
from  funds  raised  by  assessment.] 


CHAPTER  XII 

ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE   AND    FUTURE    PROSPECTS  OF 
PAUPERISM   IN   GLASGOW 

[!N  confirmation  of  his  theory  Chalmers  appeals  to 
the  experience  of  St.  John's  parish,  Glasgow.  Consid- 
ering the  number  and  character  of  its  population,  the 
share  of  the  city  funds  would  have  been  twelve  to  four- 
teen hundred  pounds  yearly.  But  the  plan  here  advo- 
cated was  set  in  motion;  the  parish  was  cut  off  from 
city  aid;  the  Sunday-morning  collection  was  made  to 
support  the  paupers  already  on  the  list,  mostly  aged  and 
rapidly  passing  away  by  death.  The  new  cases  \vere 
assisted  out  of  the  collection  from  the  evening  congre- 
gation, who  were  generally  poor  people  themselves. 
Under  this  system,  after  a  trial  of  two  and  one-half  years, 
the  meagre  sum  thus  collected  was  found  sufficient  for 
all  the  current  appeals.  There  was  a  prospect  that  the 
morning  fund  would  soon  be  available  for  educational 
and  other  enterprises  of  permanent  local  value.] 

A  result  so  gratifying  has  certainly  exceeded  our  own 
anticipations.  .  .  .  We  have  never  thought  that  pub- 
lic charity  for  the  relief  of  indigence  was  at  all  called 
for  by  the  state  and  economy  of  social  life,  or  that  the 
artificial  mechanism  of  a  legal  and  compulsory  provision 
for  the  poor  had  ever  had  any  other  effect  than  that  of 
deranging  the  better  mechanism  of  nature.  But  we  did 

219 


220  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

not  think  that  a  population  would  have  conformed  so 
speedily  to  the  right  system  after  that  the  poison  and 
perversion  of  the  wrong  system  had  been  so  long  diffused 
among  them,  or  that  when  the  great  external  reservoir 
was  shut,  out  of  which  the  main  stream  of  pauperism 
wont  to  emanate,  they  would  have  found  such  an  im- 
mediate compensation  by  their  immediate  recourse  to 
those  fountains  of  supply  which  exist  within  themselves 
and  lie  imbosomed  among  their  own  families  and  their 
own  neighborhood.  But  so  it  is,  and  that  without  any 
peculiarity  of  management  on  our  part  than  a  careful 
and  considerate  and,  we  trust,  humane  examination  of 
every  new  claim  that  is  preferred  upon  us.  The  suc- 
cess of  this  enterprise,  in  fact,  is  not  so  much  the  doing 
of  the  agency  as  it  is  of  the  people  themselves;  and  it 
hinges  not  so  much  on  the  number  of  applications  re- 
pressed by  the  one  party  as  on  the  greatly  superior  num- 
ber of  applications  that  are  foreborne  or  withheld  by 
the  other  party.  We  do  not  drive  back  the  people,  but 
the  people  keep  back  themselves,  and  that  simply  be- 
cause there  is  not  the  glare  or  magnificence  of  a  great 
city  management  to  deceive  their  imaginations  and  allure 
them  from  their  natural  shifts  and  resources,  and  be- 
cause they  are  further  aware  that  should  they  step  for- 
ward they  will  be  met  by  men  who  can  give  them  an 
intelligent  as  well  as  a  civil  reception,  who  are  thoroughly 
prepared  for  appreciating  the  merits  of  every  applica- 
tion, and  at  the  same  time  firmly  determined  to  try  every 
right  expedient  of  prevention  ere  the  humiliating  de- 
scent to  pauperism  shall  be  taken  by  any  family  within 


PAUPERISM    IN   GLASGOW  221 

the  limits  of  their  superintendence.  The  very  frank- 
ness with  which  this  is  announced  is  liked  by  the  people, 
and  let  there  be  but  an  easy  and  a  frequent  mingling 
between  the  managers  and  the  subjects  of  their  admin- 
istration and  there  will  be  no  difficulty  in  establishing 
a  community  of  sentiment  between  them,  the  very  tone 
of  hostility  toward  pauperism  that  is  manifested  by  the 
former  being  positively  caught  and  sympathized  with  by 
the  latter,  who,  though  of  humblest  rank  in  society,  can, 
when  rightly  treated,  display  a  nobility  of  heart  that 
makes  them  the  best  coadjutors  in  this  undertaking. 
The  truth  is  that  there  is  not  one  application 
for  five  that  there  wont  to  be  under  the  old  system.  It 
is  unfair  to  deceive  a  population,  and  a  population  vastly 
too  generous  to  like  one  the  worse  for  coming  to  an 
open  and  decisive  understanding  with  them.  .  .  .  Every 
act  of  friendly  intercourse  on  the  part  of  any  observant 
philanthropist  with  the  lower  orders  will  serve  to  satisfy 
him  the  more  how  much  our  distance  from  the  people 
has  kept  us  in  entire  delusion  regarding  them,  and  led 
us,  more  particularly,  to  underrate  both  their  own  suf- 
ficiency for  their  own  subsistence  and  the  noble  spirit 
by  which  they  are  already  actuated  or  which,  under  a 
right  system  of  attentions,  can  most  speedily  be  infused 
into  them.  .  .  .  The  efficacy  of  a  near  and  vigilant 
and  local  superintendence,  operating  independently  and 
within  itself,  and  left  to  its  own  means  and  its  own  man- 
agement, does  not  lie  so  much  in  the  resistance  which 
it  actually  puts  forth  against  advances  which  are  actually 
made,  as  in  the  powerful  and  almost  immediate  ten- 


222  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

dency  of  such  an  arrangement  to  beget  a  general  quies- 
cence among  the  families  of  that  territory  over  which 
it  operates. 

And,  to  prove  that  there  is  naught  whatever  of  pe- 
culiar might  or  mystery  in  our  transactions  beyond  the 
reach  of  most  ordinary  imitation,  it  may  be  right  to  state 
the  very  plain  steps  and  inquiries  which  take  place  when 
any  applicants  come  forward.  .  .  .  When  one  ap- 
plies for  admittance,  through  his  deacon,  upon  our  funds, 
the  first  thing  to  be  inquired  into  is  if  there  be  any  kind 
of  work  that  he  can  yet  do,  so  as  to  keep  him  altogether 
off  or  as  to  make  a  partial  allowance  serve  for  his  neces- 
sities. The  second,  what  his  relations  and  friends  are 
willing  to  do  for  them.  The  third,  whether  he  is  a 
hearer  in  any  dissenting  place  of  worship,  and  whether 
its  Session  will  contribute  to  his  relief.  And  if,  after 
these  previous  inquiries,  it  be  found  that  further  relief 
is  necessary,  then  there  must  be  a  strict  ascertainment 
of  his  term  of  residence  in  Glasgow,  and  whether  he  be 
yet  on  the  funds  of  the  Town  Hospital  or  is  obtaining 
relief  from  any  other  parish. 

If,  upon  all  these  points  being  ascertained,  the  dea- 
con of  the  proportion  where  he  resides  still  conceives 
him  an  object  for  our  assistance,  he  will  inquire  whether 
a  small  temporary  aid  will  meet  the  occasion,  and  states 
this  to  the  first  ordinary  meeting.  But  if,  instead  of  this, 
he  conceives  him  a  fit  subject  for  a  regular  allowance, 
he  will  receive  the  assistance  of  another  deacon  to  com- 
plete and  confirm  his  inquiries  by  the  next  ordinary 
meeting  thereafter;  at  which  time  the  applicant,  if  they 


PAUPERISM   IN   GLASGOW  223 

still  think  him  a  fit  object,  is  brought  before  us  and  re- 
ceived upon  the  fund  at  such  a  rate  of  allowance  as, 
upon  all  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  the  meeting  of 
deacons  shall  judge  proper.  Of  course,  pending  these 
examinations,  the  deacon  is  empowered  to  grant  the  same 
sort  of  discretionary  aid  that  is  customary  in  the  other 
parishes. 

[This  was  done  solely  from  the  evening  collections 
from  poor  people — £80  ($400)  a  year.  In  reply  to  the 
objection  that  this  system  would  require  an  amount  of 
time  and  labor  which  unofficial  persons  without  salary 
would  be  unwilling  or  unable  to  offer,  he  says:] 

The  task  may  look  insuperable  in  the  gross,  but  its 
obstacles  will  vanish  in  the  detail.  When  the  territory 
is  once  split  into  its  several  portions  and  assigned  to  the 
several  agents,  each  of  them  is  sure  to  find  that  the 
whole  time  and  trouble  of  the  requisite  inquiries  fall 
marvellously  short  of  his  first  anticipations.  We  deny 
not  that  upon  each  particular  application  more  of 
care  may  be  expended  than  under  the  lax  and  compli- 
cated administration  of  other  days;  but  this  is  amply 
compensated  by  a  great  and  immediate  reduction  in  the 
number  of  these  applications,  so,  in  fact,  as  almost  to 
reduce  into  a  sinecure  that  office  which,  when  regarded 
from  a  distance,  had  been  magnified  into  one  of  mighty 
and  almost  insurmountable  labor.  We  are  the  more 
solicitous  to  do  away  this  objection,  for  we,  too,  should 
decry  every  plan  to  the  uttermost,  as  bearing  upon  it 
the  character  of  Utopianism,  that  could  not  be  accom- 


224  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

plished  by  every-day  instruments,  operating  on  every- 
day materials.     .     .     . 

[In  reply  to  the  insinuation  that  St.  John's  parish  had 
reduced  its  burden  by  driving  out  paupers  by  its  rigid 
investigation  to  become  a  burden  to  neighboring  parishes, 
he  replies:] 

The  truth  is  that  on  the  first  year  of  the  reformed 
pauperism  in  St.  John's  the  importation  of  paupers  from 
the  city  into  that  parish  just  doubled  the  exportation  of 
paupers  from  the  parish  into  the  city,  and  ever  since  the 
balance  has  been  greatly  to  our  disadvantage. 

But  the  thought  will  recur  again  that  the  people  can- 
not be  served  under  such  an  arrangement,  and  therefore 
cannot  be  satisfied;  that  suffering  and  starvation  must 
be  the  necessary  accompaniments  of  an  abridged  pauper- 
ism; that  one  must  bring  a  cold  heart,  as  well  as  a  cold 
understanding,  to  this  sort  of  administration;  that  a  cer- 
tain unrelenting  hardness  of  temperament  on  the  part 
of  those  who  preside  over  it  is  altogether  indispensable 
to  its  success ;  and  that,  when  the  success  is  at  length  ob- 
tained, it  must  be  at  the  expense  of  pained  and  aggrieved 
and  neglected  humanity. 

Coldness  and  cruelty  and  hardihood  are  the  insepa- 
rable associates  of  legal  charity,  and  it  is  under  the  weight 
of  its  oppressive  influence  that  all  the  opposite  charac- 
teristics of  our  nature,  its  tenderness  and  gentleness  and 
compassion,  have  been  so  grievously  overborne.  These, 
however,  are  ready  to  burst  forth  again  in  all  their  old 
and  native  efflorescence  on  the  moment  that  this  heavy 


PAUPERISM   IN    GLASGOW  225 

incumbrance  is  cleared  away  from  the  soil  of  humanity. 
It  is  indeed  strange  that  the  advocates  of  pauperism 
should  have  so  reproached  its  enemies  for  all  those  stern 
qualities  of  the  heart  wherewith  it  is  the  direct  tendency 
of  their  own  system  to  steel  the  bosoms  of  its  hard  and 
hackneyed  administrators;  or,  because  the  latter  have  af- 
firmed that  the  cause  of  indigence  may  safely  be  confided 
to  those  spontaneous  sympathies  which  nature  has  im- 
planted and  which  Christianity  fosters  in  the  bosom  of 
man,  they  should  therefore  have  been  charged  by  the  for- 
mer with  a  conspiracy  to  damp  and  to  disparage  these  sym- 
pathies— with  an  attempt  to  eradicate  those  very  prin- 
ciples on  which  they  repose  so  much  of  their  dependence, 
and  to  the  power  of  which  and  the  importance  of  which 
they  have  rendered  the  award  of  a  most  high  and  hon- 
orable testimony. 

The  difference  between  the  administration  of  a  great 
public  revenue  for  indigence  and  the  administration  of 
a  small  one  seems  to  be  this:  The  dispensers  of  the  for- 
mer are  not  naturally  or  necessarily  led  to  bethink  them- 
selves of  any  other  way  by  which  a  case  of  poverty  can 
be  disposed  of  than  simply  by  the  application  of  the 
means  wherewith  they  are  intrusted.  And  as  these 
means,  under  a  system  of  assessment,  admit  of  being 
augmented  indefinitely,  they  are  apt  to  conceive  that 
there  is  an  adequacy  in  them  to  all  the  demands  of  all 
the  want  that  can  be  ascertained.  At  any  rate  they 
seldom  reckon  on  any  other  way  of  providing  for  human 
need  than  by  the  positive  discharge  of  legal  aliment 
thereupon.  So  that  their  only,  or,  at  least,  their  chief, 
15 


226  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

business  in  the  intercourse  they  have  with  the  applicants, 
is  simply  to  rectify  or  to  dismiss  their  claim,  on  the  in- 
vestigation they  have  made  into  their  palpable  resources, 
upon  the  one  hand,  compared  with  their  palpable  exi- 
gencies, upon  the  other.  In  the  whole  of  this  process 
there  is  much  of  the  coldness  and  formality  of  a  court  of 
law,  and  the  very  magnitude  of  the  concern,  along  with 
the  unavoidable  distance  at  which  the  members  of  such 
an  elevated  board  stand  from  those  who  venture  to  ap- 
proach it,  serves  to  infuse  still  more  of  this  character  into 
all  the  large  and  general  managements  of  pauperism. 
All  is  precise,  and  rigorous  and  stately,  or,  if  any  human 
feeling  be  admitted,  it  is  not  the  warmth  of  kindness,  but 
the  heat  of  irritation.  The  repeated  experience  of  im- 
position, and  the  consciousness  of  inability  thoroughly  to 
protect  themselves  from  the  recurrence  of  it,  and  the 
sensation  of  a  growing  pressure,  against  which  no  other 
counteractive  is  known,  or  even  put  into  operation,,  than 
that  of  a  stern  or  a  suspicious  treatment,  which  only  calls 
forth  a  more  resolute  assertion  on  the  part  of  the  aggres- 
sors upon  public  charity, — these  are  what  have  instilled  a 
certain  acerbity  into  all  its  ministrations.  So  that  with 
the  thousands  that  are  scattered  over  that  multitude  which 
the  great  city  institution  hath  drawn  around  it,  there  is 
not  one  softening  moral  influence  which  is  thereby  carried 
abroad  among  them,  no  exhibition  of  tenderness  upon  the 
one  hand,  and  no  gratitude,  that  can  only  be  awakened 
by  the  perception  of  such  tenderness,  upon  the  other;  no 
heart-felt  obligation  among  those  whose  plea  hath  been 
sustained;  while  among  those  who  are  non-suited  may 


PAUPERISM   IN   GLASGOW  227 

be  heard  the  curses  of  disappointment,  the  half-sup- 
pressed murmurs  of  deep  and  sullen  indignation.  .  .  . 
The  scantiness  of  the  means,  it  may  be  alleged,  will 
necessarily  reduce  the  elder  or  the  deacon  to  his  shifts, 
in  the  management  of  his  district.  And  so  it  does.  But 
they  are  the  very  shifts  by  which  the  business  of  human 
charity  is  transferred  to  its  right  principles,  and,  after 
this  is  accomplished,  there  is  both  more  of  genuine  satis- 
faction among  the  poor,  and  more  of  genuine  sympathy 
among  all  those  whose  duty  it  is  to  succor  or  to  uphold 
them.  .  .  .  It  is  true  that  under  this  influence  the  ex- 
penses of  public  charity  may  lessen  every  year,  yet  so  far 
from  this  being  any  indication  of  extinct  tenderness  or 
frozen  sensibilities,  it  may  serve  most  authentically  to 
mark  the  growth  of  all  those  better  habits,  and  of  all  those 
neighborly  regards  which  ensure  to  every  parochial  fam- 
ily the  greatest  comfort  and  the  greatest  contentment  that 
in  the  present  state  of  humanity  are  attainable. 

[Most  of  the  parishes  of  Glasgow  were  moving  in  the 
direction  which  Chalmers  advised  at  that  time.  He  urged 
them  to  break  away  entirely  from  the  compulsory  system 
and  to  leave  the  care  of  all  the  poor  to  each  parish.  He 
cites  one  of  the  suburban  parishes  of  Glasgow,  the  Barony, 
with  a  population  of  fifty  thousand  souls,  where  the  as- 
sessment system  had  been  introduced  in  1810.  In  seven 
years  the  poor-rate  increased  fivefold.  On  the  face  of  it 
this  fact  seemed  to  indicate  the  tendency  of  the  compul- 
sory system  to  increase  the  public  burden  indefinitely,  and 
without  increasing  the  security  and  comfort  of  the  poor.] 


CHAPTEK  XIII 

ON  THE  DIFFICULTIES  AND    EVILS  WHICH  ADHERE 

EVEN  TO   THE  BEST   CONDITION  OF   SCOTTISH 

PAUPERISM 

[ANOTHER  type  of  parish  is  that  of  the  Gorbals,  a  sub- 
urb of  Glasgow,  with  a  population  of  about  twenty-two 
thousand  persons.  The  people  were  working-folk  who 
had  little  wealth  and  no  unusual  sources  of  revenue.  This 
parish  had  never  admitted  an  assessment,  and  the  annual 
expense  for  the  poor  was  not  over  £400.  The  author 
thinks  it  a  fair  inference  that  if  such  a  poor  parish  could 
get  on  without  compulsory  relief  others  might  do  as 
well;  that  a  tax  is  unnecessary.  In  1817  this  parish,  in 
a  year  of  unusual  hardship,  when  a  fund  of  £10,000  was 
raised  for  relief,  received  only  about  one-seventh  of 
that  received  by  Glasgow,  where  the  tax  system  was  main- 
tained. Part  of  the  better  administration  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  elders  of  Gorbals  were  resident  among  the 
people  and  knew  them  personally.  Dr.  Chalmers  regards 
this  as  a  sign  that  the  voluntary  system  does  not  impose 
special  hardship  on  the  almoners  of  relief.  If  the  elders 
were  really  in  antagonism  with  the  people  they  would 
seek  to  dwell  at  a  distance,  "  and  we  should  behold  the 
elders  of  this  parish,  each  skulking  in  distance  and  con- 
cealment from  the  clamor  of  unappeased  families,  and 
the  remonstrance  and  outcry  of  their  sympathizing  neigh- 
borhood. Instead  of  which,  they  place  themselves  fear- 
lessly down  in  the  very  midst  of  all  these  possibilities,  and 

228 


DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCOTTISH    PAUPERISM          229 

on  their  slender  means  do  they  brave  an  encounter  with 
all  the  real  or  imagined  poverty  that  is  around  them."] 

The  thing  that  has  been  found  in  consequence  is  that 
the  way  of  bringing  pauperism  down  to  its  right  dimen- 
sions is  to  face  and  not  to  flee  from  it;  that,  instead  of 
starving  it  by  immanfully  running  away  the  better 
method  of  reducing  it  is  by  proximity  and  thorough  in- 
vestigation, to  probe  it  to  the  uttermost;  that  the  nearer 
you  come  to  it,  it  dwindles  the  more  into  insignificance 
before  you.  .  .  . 

[Even  under  the  best  conditions  the  system  of  public 
relief  tends  to  excite  the  greed  of  dependents  and  to  dull 
the  charity  of  the  rich  by  devolving  a  personal  duty  upon 
a  public  officer.] 

It  is  cruel  first  to  raise  a  hope  and  then  to  disappoint  it, 
and  there  are  two  expedients  by  which  this  cruelty  might 
be  done  away.  The  first  and  most  obvious  expedient  were 
to  meet  the  hope  by  a  liberality  more  adequate  to  the  high 
pitch  at  which  it  is  entertained.  This  has  been  attempted 
in  England,  and  we  venture  to  affirm,  as  the  consequence 
of  it,  a  tenfold  amount  of  unappeased  rapacity  and  of  ran- 
corous dissatisfaction  and  of  all  that  distress  which  arises 
where  the  expectation  has  greatly  overshot  the  fulfilment. 
The  second  expedient  were  utterly  to  extinguish  the  hope, 
by  the  total  abolition  of  public  charity  for  the  relief  of 
indigence.  This  has  not  been  attempted  in  Scotland ;  and 
there  are  reasons,  both  of  a  prudential  and  of  an  absolute 
character  why  we  should  deem  the  attempt  to  be  not  ad- 


230  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

visable.  But,  meanwhile,  if  the  sessional  charity  of  Scot- 
land is  to  be  kept  up,  it  is  but  honesty  to  proclaim  its  utter 
insignificance  in  the  hearing  of  all  the  people.  They 
should  be  taught  that  in  trusting  in  it  they  only  trust  to 
a  lying  mockery.  The  way  to  neutralize  the  mischief  of 
our  parochial  dispensations  is  by  a  frank  and  open  ex- 
posure of  their  utter  worthlessness ;  for  we  know  not  how 
a  more  grievous  injury  can  be  done  to  the  poor  than  by 
holding  out  such  a  semblance  of  aid  to  them  as  might 
either  reduce,  by  ever  so  little,  their  own  economy,  or 
deaden,  by  ever  so  little,  the  sympathy  of  their  fellows. 
A  full  feeling  of  responsibility  to  the  demands  of  human 
want  and  human  suffering  should  be  kept  alive  among 
the  families  of  every  neighborhood;  and  for  this  pur- 
pose it  ought  to  be  a  matter  of  broad  understanding  and 
notoriety,  that  there  is  positively  nothing  done  by  any  of 
our  Kirk-Sessions  which  should  supersede  the  care  of  in- 
dividuals for  themselves  or  their  keepership  one  for  an- 
other. The  elder  who  effectually  teaches  this  lesson  in 
his  district,  does  more  for  the  substantial  relief  of  its 
needy  than  by  any  multiplication  whatever  of  public  al- 
lowances ;  and  even  without  one  farthing  ta  bestow  may 
thus  be  the  instrument  of  a  great  alleviation  to  the  ills  and 
hardships  of  poverty.  It  is  a  downright  fraud  upon  our 
population  to  keep  up  the  forms  of  a  great  public  distribu- 
tion without  letting  them  know  that  the  fruits  of  it  are 
so  rareiand  scanty  as  to  be  wholly  undeserving  of  all  notice 
or  regard  from  them.  .  .  . 

In  the  great  majority  of  our  Scottish  parishes  all  which 
the -administrators  of  the  public  charity  profess  to  do  is  to 


DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCOTTISH    PAUPERISM          231 

"  give  in  aid."  They  do  not  hold  themselves  responsible 
for  the  entire  subsistence  of  any  of  their  paupers;  they 
presume  in  the  general,  on  other  resources,  without  in- 
quiring specifically  either  into  the  nature  or  the  amount 
of  them.  It  says  much  for  the  truth  of  our  whole  specu- 
lation that  in  this  presumption  they  are  almost  never  dis- 
appointed ;  and  that  whether  in  the  kindness  of  relatives, 
or  the  sympathy  of  neighbors,  or  the  many  undefinable 
shifts  and  capabilities  of  the  pauper  himself,  there  do  cast 
up  to  him  the  items  of  a  maintenance.  .  .  . 

Let  us  advert  to  a  few  of  those  leading  principles  on 
which  we  hold  it  a  practicable  thing  to  perfect  the  ad- 
ministration of  our  Scottish  pauperism. 

And,  first,  we  think  that  a  great  moral  good  would  en- 
sue and  without  violence  done  to  humanity,  were  the  Kirk- 
Session  to  put  a  negative  on  all  those  demands  that  have 
their  direct  and  visible  origin  in  profligacy  of  character. 
We  allude  more  particularly  to  the  cases  of  illegitimate 
children  and  of  runaway  parents.  It  should  ever  rank 
among  those  decent  proprieties  of  an  ecclesiastical  court 
which  can  on  no  account  be  infringed,  that  it  shall  do 
nothing  which  might  extend  a  countenance  or  give  a  se- 
curity to  wickedness.  "  In  the  case  of  exposed  infants  a 
necessity  may  be  laid  upon  it.  But  sure  we  are  that  gen- 
erally, and  without  outrage  to  any  of  our  sympathies,  the 
criminal  parties  may  be  safely  left  to  the  whole  weight  of 
a  visitation  that  is  at  once  the  consequence  and  the  cor- 
rective of  their  own  transgression.  We  know  not  a  more 
pitiable  condition  than  that  of  a  female  who  is  at  once 
degraded  and  deserted;  but  many  are  the  reasons  why  it 


232  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

should  be  altogether  devolved  on  the  secret  and  unob- 
served pity  which  it  is  so  well-fitted  to  inspire.  And  we 
know  not  a  more  striking  exhibition  of  the  power  of  those 
sympathies,  that  we  have  so  often  quoted  as  being  ade- 
quate, in  themselves,  to  all  the  emergencies  of  human  suf- 
fering, than  the  unfailing  aid,  and  service,  and  supply, 
wherewith  even  the  childbed  of  guilt  is  sure  to  be  sur- 
rounded. It  is  a  better  state  of  things  when,  instead  of 
the  loud  and  impudent  demand  that  is  sometimes  lifted 
upon  such  occasions,  the  sufferer  is  left  to  a  dependence 
upon  her  own  kinsfolk,  and  neighbors,  and  to  the  strong 
moral  corrective  that  lies  in  their  very  kindness  to  her. 
We  think  that  if  every  instance  of  a  necessity  which  has 
thus  been  created  were  understood  to  lie  without  the  pale 
of  the  sessional  administration,  and  to  be  solely  a  draft  on 
the  liberalities  of  the  benevolent,  we  both  think  that  these 
liberalities  would  guarantee  a  subsistence  to  all  who  are 
concerned,  and  that,  at  the  same  time,  in  a  more  intense 
popular  odium,  there  would  arise  a  defensive  barrier 
against  that  licentiousness  which  the  institutions  of  our 
sister  country  have  done  so  much  to  foster  and  to  patron- 
ize. It  must  shed  a  grievous  blight  over  the  delicacies 
of  a  land  when  the  shameless  prostitute  is  vested  with  a 
right,  because  of  the  very  misdeeds  which  ought  to  have 
humbled  and  abashed  her,  when  she  can  plead  her  own 
disgrace  as  the  argument  for  being  listened  to,  and,  on 
the  strength  of  it,  compel  the  jurisdictions  of  the  country 
to  do  homage  to  her  claim,  when  crime  is  thus  made  the 
passport  to  legal  privileges,  and  the  native  unloveliness 
of  vice  is  somewhat  glossed  and  overborne  by  the  public 


DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCOTTISH    PAUPERISM          233 

recognition  which  has  thus  so  unwisely  been  extended 
to  it. 

In  the  case  of  a  family  that  has  been  abandoned  by  its 
regardless  and  unnatural  father,  and  where  there  is  no 
suspected  collusion  between  the  parents,  there  is  pity  min- 
gled with  reproach  to  the  helpless  sufferers.  And  our 
whole  experience  assures  us  that  this  pity  would  be  avail- 
able to  a  far  larger  and  more  important  aid  than  is  ren- 
dered, on  such  occasions,  by  any  of  the  public  charities 
in  Scotland. 

[He  thinks  that  no  one  would  be  left  to  suffer,  and 
parents  would  be  much  less  likely  to  desert  their  offspring, 
if  they  knew  that  their  own  neighbors  must  directly  bear 
the  burden.  Family  obligations  would  not  be  dissolved 
under  the  voluntary  plan  as  they  are  under  the  general 
system.  Instead  of  being  a  harsh  and  unfeeling  sugges- 
tion it  is  thought  to  be  most  merciful,  since  it  tends  to 
reduce  cruelty  and  desertion  and  immorality  to  the  lowest 
point.] 

But,  secondly,  if  that  indigence  which  is  the  effect  of 
crime  might  be  confined  to  the  charities  of  private  life, 
we  may  be  very  sure  that  the  indigence  which  is  not  as- 
sociated with  crime  will  be  largely  and  liberally  met  by 
these  charities.  ...  One  of  our  chief  arguments  for 
re-committing  the  business  of  alms  to  a  natural  economy 
is,  that  the  wealthy  and  the  poor  would  thereby  come  more 
frequently  into  contact,  and  that  would  be  made  to  issue 
upon  the  destitute  from  the  play  of  human  feelings,  which 
is  now  extorted  without  good-will  on  the  one  side,  or  grati- 
tude on  the  other,  by  the  authority  of  human  law.  It 


234  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

were  an  incalculable  good  if,  in  this  way,  the  breath 
of  a  milder  and  happier  spirit  could  be  infused  into 
society.  .  .  . 

But,  thirdly,  there  is  a  class  of  necessities  in  the  relief 
of  which  public  charity  is  not  at  all  deleterious,  and  which 
she  might  be  safely  left  to  single  out  and  support,  both 
as  liberally  and  ostensibly  as  she  may.  We  allude  to  all 
those  varieties,  whether  of  mental  or  of  bodily  disease, 
for  which  it  is  a  wise  and  salutary  thing  to  rear  a  public 
institution.  We  hold  it  neither  wise  nor  salutary  to  have 
any  such  asylum  for  the  impotency  which  springeth  from 
age;  for  this  is  not  an  unforeseen  exigency,  but  one  that, 
in  the  vast  majority  of  instances,  could  have  been  pro- 
vided for,  by  the  care  of  the  individual.  And  neither  is 
it  an  exigency  that  is  destitute  of  all  resource  in  the  claims 
and  obligations  of  nature,  for  what  is  more  express,  or 
more  clearly  imperative  than  the  duty  of  children?  A 
systematic  provision  for  age  in  any  land  is  tantamount 
to  a  systematic  hostility  against  its  virtues,  both  of  pru- 
dence and  of  natural  piety.  But  there  are  other  infirmi- 
ties and  other  visitations,  to  which  our  nature  is  liable, 
and  a  provision  for  which  stands  clearly  apart  from  all 
that  is  exceptionable.  We  refer  not  to  those  current 
household  diseases  which  are  incidental,  on  the  average, 
to  every  family,  but  to  those  more  special  inflictions  of 
distress  by  which  in  one  or  more  of  its  members,  a  family 
is  sometimes  set  apart  and  signalized.  A  child  who  is 
blind,  or  speechless,  or  sunk  in  helpless  idiotism,  puts  into 
this  condition  the  family  to  which  it  belongs.  No  mis- 
chief whatever  can  accrue  from  every  such  case  being 


DIFFICULTIES   OF    SCOTTISH   PAUPERISM         235 

fully  met  and  provided  for,  and  it  were  the  best  vindica- 
tion of  a  Kirk-Session,  for  the  spareness  of  its  allowances, 
on  all  those  occasions  where  the  idle  might  work,  or  kins- 
folk might  interpose,  that  it  gives  succor  to  the  uttermost 
of  its  means  in  all  those  fatalities  of  nature  which  no  pru- 
dence could  avert,  and  which  being  not  chargeable  as  a 
fault,  ought  neither  to  be  chargeable  as  an  expense  on  any 
poor  and  struggling  family. 

It  may  be  seen  at  once  wherein  lies  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  necessities  of  signal  and  irremediable  disease 
and  those  merely  of  general  indigence.  A  provision,  how- 
ever conspicuous,  for  the  former,  will  not  add  one  in- 
stance of  distress  more  to  the  already  existing  catalogue. 
A  provision  for  the  latter,  if  regular  and  proclaimed,  will 
furthermore  be  counted  on,  and  so  be  sure  to  multiply  its 
own  objects,  to  create,  in  fact,  more  of  general  want  than 
it  supplies.  To  qualify  for  the  first  kind  of  relief,  one 
must  be  blind,  or  deaf,  or  lunatic,  or  maimed,  which  no 
man  is  wilfully,  so  that  this  walk  of  charity  can  be  over- 
taken, and  without  any  corrupt  influence  on  those  who  are 
sustained  by  it.  To  qualify  for  the  second  kind  of  relief 
one  has  only  to  be  poor,  which  many  become  wilfully, 
and  always,  too,  in  numbers  which  exceed  the  promise 
and  the  power  of  public  charity  to  uphold  them;  so  that 
this  walk  cannot  only  never  be  overtaken,  but,  by  every 
step  of  advancement  upon  it,  it  stretches  forth  to  a  more 
hopeless  distance  than  before,  and  is  also  more  crowded 
with  the  thriftless,  and  the  beggarly  and  the  immoral. 
The  former  cases  are  put  into  our  hand  by  nature,  in  a 
certain  definite  amount,  and  she  has  further  established 


236  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

in  the  human  constitution  such  a  recoil  from  pain,  or  from 
the  extinction  of  any  of  the  senses,  as  to  form  a  sure  guar- 
antee against  the  multiplication  of  them.  The  latter  cases 
are  put  into  our  hands  by  man,  and  his  native  love  of  in- 
dolence or  dissipation  becomes  a  spontaneous  and  most 
productive  fountain  of  poverty,  in  every  land  where  public 
charity  has  interposed  to  disarm  it  of  its  terrors.  It  is 
thus  that  while  pauperism  has  most  egregiously  failed  to 
provide  an  asylum  in  which  to  harbor  all  the  indigence 
of  a  country,  there  is  no  such  an  impossibility  in  the  at- 
tempt to  harbor  derangement,  or  special  impotency  and 
disease.  The  one  enterprise  must  ever  fall  short  of  its 
design,  and,  at  the  same  time,  carry  a  moral  deterioration 
in  its  train.  The  other  may  fulfil  its  design  to  the  ut- 
termost, and  without  the  alloy  of  a  single  evil  that  either 
patriot  or  economist  can  fear. 

The  doings  of  our  Saviour  in  the  world,  after  he  entered 
on  his  career  as  a  minister,  had  in  them  much  of  the  eclat 
of  public  charity.  Had  he  put  his  miraculous  power  of 
feeding  into  full  operation,  it  would  have  thrown  the  peo- 
ple loose  from  all  regular  habits,  and  spread  riot  and  dis- 
order over  the  face  of  the  land.  But  there  was  no  such 
drawback  to  his  miraculous  power  of  healing.  And  we 
think  it  both  marks  the  profoundness  of  his  wisdom,  and 
might  serve  to  guide  the  institutions  and  the  schemes  of 
philanthropy,  that  while  we  read  of  but  two  occasions  on 
which  he  multiplied  loaves  for  a  people  who  had  been 
overtaken  with  hunger,  and  one  on  which  he  refused  the 
miracle  to  a  people  who  crowded  about  him  for  the  pur- 
pose of  being  fed,  he  laid  no  limitation  whatever  on  his 


DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCOTTISH    PAUPERISM          23? 

supernatural  faculties,  when  they  followed  him  for  the 
purpose  of  being  cured.  But  it  is  recorded  of  him 
again  and  again,  that  when  the  halt  and  the  withered 
and  the  blind  and  the  impotent,  and  those  afflicted 
with  divers  diseases  were  brought  unto  him,  he  looked 
to  them,  and  he  had  compassion  on  them,  and  he  healed 
them  all. 

This,  then,  is  one  safe  and  salutary  absorbent  for  the 
revenue  of  a  Kirk-Session.  The  dumb  and  the  blind  and 
the  insane  of  a  parish  may  be  freely  alimented  therewith, 
to  the  great  relief  of  those  few  families  who  have  thus 
been  specially  afflicted.  Such  a  destination  of  the  fund 
could  excite  no  beggarly  spirit  in  other  families,  which, 
wanting  the  peculiar  claim,  would  feel  that  they  had  no 
part  or  interest  in  the  peculiar  compassion.  There  is  vast 
comfort  in  every  walk  of  philanthropy,  where  a  distinct 
and  definite  good  is  to  be  accomplished,  and  whereof,  at 
a  certain  given  expense,  we  are  sure  to  reach  the  consum- 
mation. .  .  .  There  would  be  no  harm  in  stimulating 
the  liberality  of  a  congregation  for  the  support  of  a  parish 
surgeon,  who  might  be  at  the  free  command  of  the  fam- 
ilies. There  wrould  be  no  harm  in  thus  supporting  a  dis- 
pensary for  good  medicines,  or  in  purchasing  an  indefinite 
right  of  admittance  to  a  hospital  for  disease.  .  .  . 

The  parochial  charity  of  our  land  need  not  be  ex- 
tirpated. It  is  in  the  power  of  a  wise  and  wholesome  ad- 
ministration to  impress  upon  it  a  high  moral  subservi- 
ency; to  turn  it,  for  example,  to  the  endowment  of 
schools,  or  the  establishment  of  parish  libraries,  or  the 
rearing  of  chapels  for  an  unprovided  population,  who,  by 


238  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

one  and  the  same  process,  could  have  their  moral  wants 
supplied,  and  be  weaned  from  all  that  sordid  dependence 
of  charity  by  which  their  physical  wants  have  not  been 
abridged,  but  rather  aggravated,  both  in  their  frequency 
and  their  soreness. 


CHAPTEE  XIV 

ON  THE  LIKELIEST  MEANS   FOR  THE  ABOLITION   OF 
PAUPERISM  IN   ENGLAND 

[AFTER  referring  to  Chapter  X  for  the  argument 
against  "  pauperism,"  the  author  proceeds  with  the  as- 
sertion that  the  evils  of  the  English  administration  are 
universally  acknowledged  and  need  no  expanded  illus- 
tration. The  law  of  pauperism  in  England  had  dried  up 
the  streams  of  personal  charity,  had  degraded  the  poor, 
and  had  burdened  the  land  with  a  tax  which  threatened 
the  national  prosperity.  To  remove  this  state  of  things 
nothing  more  was  necessary  than,  by  gradual  and  pru- 
dent stages,  to  throw  back  the  indigent  on  their  own 
exertions  and  on  the  natural  kindness  of  their  neighbors.] 

It  is  just  as  if  some  diseased  excrescence  had  gathered 
upon  the  human  frame,  that  stood  connected  with  the  use 
of  some  palatable  but  pernicious  liquor,  to  which  the  pa- 
tient was  addicted.  All  that  the  physician  has  to  do  in 
this  case  is  to  interdict  the  liquor,  when,  without  further 
care  or  guardianship  on  his  part,  the  excrescence  will  sub- 
side, and  from  the  vis  medicatrix  alone,  that  is  inherent 
in  the  patient's  constitution,  will  health  be  restored  to 
him.  .  .  .  There  might  an  unnecessary  shock  be  given 
by  too  sudden  a  change  of  regimen.  There  might  be  an 
inconvenient  rapidity  of  transition,  which  had  as  well  be 

239 


240  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

avoided,  by  wise  and  wary  management.  This  considera- 
tion affects  the  question  of  policy  as  to  the  most  advisable 
mode  of  carrying  the  cure  into  effect.  But  it  does  not 
affect  the  question  of  principle,  either  as  to  the  cause  of 
the  disease,  or  as  to  the  certainty  of  a  good  and  wholesome 
result  when  that  cause  is  done  away.  .  .  . 

And  surely  it  cannot  be  questioned  that  all  those  prin- 
ciples of  our  nature  which,  taken  together,  make  out  the 
vis  medicatrix,  are  just  as  firmly  seated,  and  would  in  fit 
and  favorable  circumstances  be  of  as  unfailing  operation 
in  England  as  in  any  other  country  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  .  .  .  For,  first,  what  malignant  charm  can 
there  be  in  the  air  or  in  the  geography  of  England  which 
should  lead  us  to  conceive  of  its  people,  that  they  are  ex- 
empt from  that  most  urgent  principle  of  our  nature — the 
law  of  self-preservation  ?  ...  In  spite  of  their  pauper- 
ism, and  of  its  efficacy  to  lull  them  into  a  careless  improvi- 
dence, do  we  find  that  the  prudential  virtues,  even  of  the 
lower  orders,  are  enfeebled  only,  and  not  destroyed.  The 
Saving  Banks,  and  Benefit  Societies,  which  are  to  be  met 
with  in  almost  every  district  of  the  kingdom,  are  strong 
ostensible  indications  of  a  right  and  reflecting  selfishness, 
which,  if  only  kept  on  the  alert,  and  unseduced  from  its 
own  objects,  by  the  promise  and  the  allurement  of  public 
charity,  would  do  more  for  the  comfort  of  our  peasantry 
than  all  the  offerings  of  parochial  and  private  benevo- 
lence put  together.  There  is  nought  that  would  more  re- 
vive or  re-invigorate  the  impulse  to  accumulation  than 
the  abolition  of  the  law  of  pauperism.  Saving  Banks 
would  be  multiplied;  and  this,  though  the  most  palpable, 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  PAUPERISM  IN  ENGLAND       241 

would  not  be  the  only  fruit  of  that  sure  and  speedy  resur- 
rection that  should  then  take  place  of  an  economic  habit 
among  the  people. 

[In  a  note  the  author  illustrates  the  evil  effects  of  out- 
door relief  on  the  habit  of  thrift  among  laborers.  He  ob- 
serves that  the  deposits  in  "  Saving  Banks  "  are  largely 
made  by  domestic  servants  and  by  persons  in  easy  circum- 
stances, and  that  common  laborers  neglect  these  institu- 
tions. "  The  operation  of  public  charity  in  lessening  the 
deposits  must  be  quite  obvious.  The  following  anecdote 
illustrates  this.  To  prove  it  is  not  necessary.  A  poor 
woman  at  Clapham,  near  London,  whose  daughter  had 
begun  to  put  into  the  '  Saving  Bank,'  said  to  her,  '  Why, 
how  foolish  you  are.  It  is  all  a  contrivance  of  the  rich  to 
save  their  own  pockets.  You  had  much  better  enjoy 
your  own  money,  and  when  you  want  they  will  take 
care  of  you.'  The  daughter  did  withdraw  from  the 
Saving  Bank."] 

But,  secondly,  the  law  of  relative  affection,  in  a  nat- 
ural state  of  things,  we  should  imagine  to  be  of  just  as 
powerful  operation  in  England  as  in  any  other  country 
of  the  world.  .  .  .  The  advertisements  which  daily 
meet  our  eye  of  runaway  husbands,  or  abandoned  chil- 
dren, and  those  cases  of  aged  parents  who  have  been  con- 
signed, by  their  own  offspring,  to  the  cheerless  atmosphere 
of  a  poor's  house,  mark  not  the  genuine  developments  of 
nature  in  England,  but  those  cruel  deviations  from  it  to 
which  its  mistaken  policy  has  given  rise.  .  .  .  The 
spectacle  of  venerable  grandsires  at  the  fireside  of  cottage 
families  will  become  as  frequent  and  familiar  in  this  as 

in  other  lands.    And  a  man's  own  children  will  be  to  him 
16 


242  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  best  pledges  that  the  evening  of  his  days  shall  be  spent 
under  a  roof  of  kindlier  protection  than  any  prison-house 
of  charity  can  afford.  Let  pauperism  be  done  away,  and 
it  will  be  nobly  followed  up  by  a  resurrection  of  the  do- 
mestic virtues.  The  national  crime  will  disappear  with 
the  national  temptation;  and  England,  when  delivered 
therefrom,  will  prove  herself  to  be  as  tender  and  true 
to  nature  as  any  other  member  of  the  great  human 
family.  .  .  . 

And,  thirdly,  who  can  doubt  from  the  known  generos- 
ity of  the  English  character,  that  nought  but  scope  and 
opportunity  are  wanting  in  order  to  evince  both  the  force 
and  the  fruitfulness  of  that  sympathy  which  neighbors  in 
humble  life  have  for  each  other.  .  .  .  Like  the  law  of 
relative  affection,  it  is  not  capable  of  being  verified  from 
the  records  or  the  registers  of  a  general  and  combined 
philanthropy,  and  can  only  be  witnessed  to  its  full  extent 
by  those  who  are  thoroughly  conversant  with  the  habits 
of  the  poor,  and  have  had  much  of  close  and  frequent 
observation  among  the  intimacies  of  plebeian  fellowship. 
There  is  not  one  topic  on  which  the  higher  orders  of  Eng- 
land have  so  crude  and  unfurnished  an  apprehension,  as 
on  the  power  and  alertness  of  mutual  sympathy  among 
the  working  classes.  This,  in  some  measure,  arises  from 
its  being  in  part  stifled  throughout  the  whole  of  their 
land,  because  in  part  superseded  by  their  public  and 
parochial  institutions.  But  still  it  may  be  abundantly 
recognized.  .  .  . 

But  this  disposition  of  the  lower  orders  to  befriend  each 
other  were  of  little  avail,  in  this  question,  without  the 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  PAUPERISM  IN  ENGLAND       243 

power.  .  .  .  On  this  point,  too,  there  is  a  world  of  in- 
credulity to  be  met  with;  and  it  is  difficult  to  find  ac- 
ceptance for  that  arithmetic  which  demonstrates  the 
might  and  the  efficacy  of  those  humble  offerings  which 
so  amply  compensate  by  their  number  for  the  smallness 
of  each  individually.  The  penny  associations  which  have 
been  instituted  for  objects  of  Christian  beneficence,  afford 
us  a  lesson  as  to  the  power  and  productiveness  of  littles. 
Even  the  sums  deposited  with  Saving  Banks  and  Benefit 
Societies  point  to  the  same  conclusion.  But  perhaps 
the  most  impressive,  though  melancholy,  proof  that  can 
be  given  of  a  capability  in  humble  life,  greatly  beyond 
all  that  is  commonly  imagined,  may  be  gathered  from 
the  vast  sums  which  are  annually  expended  in  those 
houses  of  public  entertainment  that  are  so  frequented  by 
people  of  the  laboring  classes  in  society.  .  .  . 

The  fourth  and  last  counteractive  against  the  evils  that 
might  be  apprehended  to  ensue  on  the  abolition  of  pauper- 
ism, is  the  freer  and  larger  sympathy  which  would  then 
be  exercised  by  the  rich  in  behalf  of  the  poor.  This  we 
have  placed  last  in  the  order  of  enumeration,  because  we 
deem  it  least  in. the  order  of  importance.  .  .  .  There  are 
subscriptions  and  philanthropic  societies  innumerable. 
There  is  not  a  parish  of  any  great  note  or  population  in 
England  without  them,  and  they  prove  how  surely  we 
may  count  on  a  kind  and  copious  descent  of  liberality  over 
all  those  places  from  which  the  dispensations  of  pauper- 
ism shall  be  withdrawn. 

[England  had  not  been  released  from  the  necessity  of 
raising  large  sums  by  voluntary  gifts  because  it  had  a 


244  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

compulsory  poor-rate.  The  very  fact  that  the  rich  are 
compelled  to  aid  the  indigent  tends  to  dimmish  the  mo- 
tives which  lead  to  generosity.] 

That  act  of  Elizabeth,  which  has  been  extolled  as  a 
monument  of  English  feeling  and  English  wisdom,  is  a 
monument  of  the  legislature's  fears,  that  neither  feeling 
nor  wisdom  were  to  be  found  in  the  land.  It  is,  in  fact, 
the  cruelest  reproach  which  the  government  of  a  country 
ever  laid  upon  its  subjects.  It  is  an  enactment  founded 
on  a  distrust  of  the  national  character,  or  an  attempt  to 
supplement  by  law  an  apprehended  deficiency  in  the 
personal  and  the  domestic  and  the  social  virtues  of  Eng- 
lishmen. And  never  did  an  assembly  of  rulers  make  a 
more  unfortunate  aberration  across  the  rightful  bounda- 
ries of  the  province  which  belongs  to  them.  Never  did 
legislation  more  hurtfully  usurp  the  prerogatives  of  nat- 
ure than  when  she  stretched  forth  her  hand  to  raise  a 
prop,  by  which  she  has  pierced  the  side  of  charity,  and 
did  that  with  an  intent  to  foster,  which  has  served  only 
to  destroy. 

[Allusion  is  made  to  various  English  efforts  to  reduce 
the  overwhelming  burden  of  pauperism  by  a  more  rigid 
administration,  by  strict  investigation,  refusal  to  aid  those 
who  refused  to  seek  or  accept  work,  or  whose  relatives 
were  able  to  provide  for  them.  But  these  attempts  are 
of  comparatively  slight  consequence  so  long  as  the  sys- 
tem of  compulsory  legal  relief  remains.  Its  vices  are  deep 
and  belong  to  its  essence.] 

And  there  is  reason  to  fear  that  even  in  those  parishes 
where  a  select  vestry  has  been  most  successful,  there  may 
be  a  speedy  recurrence  to  the  same  lax  and  careless  style 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  PAUPERISM  IN  ENGLAND       245 

of  administration  as  before.  .  .  .  Even  the  very  relief 
that  has  been  achieved,  might  lead  to  a  satisfaction  and  a 
repose,  that  would  soon  call  back  as  great  a  host  of  appli- 
cants as  ever,  for  it  is  the  very  nature  of  pauperism,  that, 
at  all  times,  there  is  the  pressure  of  a  tendency  from  with- 
out, which  will  instantly  force  admittance  so  soon  as  there 
is  the  slightest  relaxation  from  that  vigilance  wherewith 
its  approaches  have  been  guarded. 

The  marvels  which  have  of  late  been  effected  by  a 
strict  administration  have  suspended,  in  some  places,  the 
desire  that  was  at  one  time  felt  for  a  radical  change  of 
system  in  the  public  charity  of  England.  But  we  do  not 
think  that  this  can  last  long,  and  have  no  doubt  that  after 
various  expedients  have  been  tried  and  found  wanting, 
the  final  result  will  be  a  stronger  experimental  conviction 
than  ever  of  something  wrong  in  the  principle  as  well  as 
in  the  practice  of  the  poor  laws.  There  is,  we  believe,  a 
possible  rigor  in  the  execution  of  them,  by  which,  if  put 
into  operation,  two-thirds  of  all  the  paupers  now  in  the 
country  might  be  thrown  back  upon  their  own  resources, 
and  yet  be  landed  in  a  state  of  as  great  comfort  and  suf- 
ficiency as,  with  their  present  allowances,  they  at  present 
enjoy.  .  .  .  But,  then,  this  requisite  degree  of  rigor 
will,  in  the  first  place,  not  be  adopted  in  most  parishes; 
and,  secondly,  in  those  parishes  where  under  a  strong 
temporary  impulse  it  has  been  resorted  to,  and  with  great 
immediate  success,  it  will  not  be  persevered  in.  The  very 
success  will  lull  the  administration  into  its  old  apathy. 
The  pitch  and  the  tension  to  which  it  has  been  wound  up 
will  relax  again.  .  .  . 


246  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

But  even  though  the  force  of  resistance  from  within 
was  kept  up  in  the  utmost  possible  intensity,  yet  we  can- 
not imagine  a  state  of  things  more  injurious  to  the  virtue 
and  peace  of  the  commonwealth.  Even  though  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  workhouse  should  at  length  be  perfectly  as- 
similated to  the  discipline  of  a  gaol,  we  fear  that  like 
many  others  of  the  legal  scarecrows  which  have  been  de- 
vised, its  only  reaction  would  be  in  working  down  the 
taste  and  character  of  the  people  to  its  own  standard.  In 
proportion  as  the  law  multiplied  its  severities,  would  pau- 
perism acquire  a  stouter  stomach  for  the  digestion  of 
them,  and  those  regulations  which  at  first  might  deter, 
will,  at  length,  be  got  over,  because  of  a  now  fiercer  and 
hardier  and  more  resolute  population.  We  have,  at  all 
times,  exceedingly  doubted  the  policy  of  those  expedients 
which  are  meant  to  operate  in  terrorem,  and  have  ever 
thought  of  them  as  most  fearfully  hazardous  experiments 
on  the  principle  and  feeling  of  the  lower  orders.  They 
may  repel  some  of  those  who  are  of  a  better  and  finer 
temperament  than  their  neighbors;  but,  in  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  instances,  will  they  blunt  the  delica- 
cies which  are  thus  handled  too  rudely;  and  the  very 
instrument  which  they  thought  to  lay  hold  of  for  driving 
applicants  away,  will  vanish  before  their  grasp.  .  .  . 

The  badges,  and  the  publication  of  names,  and  the 
posting  of  them  in  conspicuous  places,  may  all  work  a  re- 
coil from  pauperism  for  a  time,  but  only  to  come  back 
with  accumulated  force,  and  with  a  more  sturdy  and  un- 
manageable character  than  before.  .  .  .  The  practical 
effect  of  the  whole  has  been  to  form  two  distinct  classes 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  PAUPERISM  IX  ENGLAND       247 

or  characters  of  population,  which  stand  more  widely  and 
remotely  contrasted  in  England  than  they  do,  we  helieve, 
in  any  other  country  of  Europe.  The  one  is  a  pure,  and 
a  noble,  and  a  high-minded  class,  who,  of  course,  would 
be  revolted  by  the  severities  of  pauperism.  The  other 
yield  to  her  temptations,  and,  by  weathering  the  brunt  of 
her  severities,  their  meanness  and  corruption  have  only 
been  rendered  more  inveterate.  The  spirit  of  education 
and  of  moral  enterprise  that  is  now  abroad  in  England 
must  extend  the  one  class.  But  while  the  law  of  pauper- 
ism continues,  the  other  class  too  must  increase  and  mul- 
tiply. They  are  the  in-field  gypsies  of  the  land ;  and  they 
transmit  their  habit  to  their  descendants;  and  this  is  the 
reason  that  pauperism  is  so  apt  to  fix,  as  if  by  hereditary 
settlement,  in  families.  There  is  thus  a  mass  of  corrup- 
tion that  never  will  be  got  rid  of  but  with  the  extinction 
of  this  boasted  charity  by  law.  Until  a  blow  be  given  to 
the  root  of  the  mischief,  it  will  be  found,  in  the  long  run, 
that  there  is  a  noxiousness  in  its  antidotes,  as  well  as  in 
its  bane.  Its  severities,  in  fact,  are  alike  hurtful  with  its 
temptations.  It  is  not  by  playing  one  against  another 
that  any  substantial  or  abiding  reformation  will  be  gained. 
There  must  be  a  way  devised  by  which  to  cancel  both. 

Believing  then,  as  we  do,  that  no  general  or  abiding 
good  will  ever  be  effectuated  by  a  stricter  administration 
of  the  law  of  pauperism,  we  feel  our  decided  preference 
to  be  for  the  gradual  abolition  of  it.  ...  The  question 
now  resolves  itself  into  two  parts.  There  is  first  the  parli- 
amentary treatment  of  it,  and  then  the  parochial  treat- 
ment of  it,  after  that  the  legislature  has  done  its  office. 


248  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

J  .  .  The  splendid  visionary  is  precipitated  from  his 
aerial  flight,  because  he  overlooked  the  utter  pathlessness 
of  that  space  which  lay  between  him  and  the  impossi- 
bility that  he  aspired  after.  .  .  .  The  fixed  and  ob- 
stinate practitioner  refuses  to  move  one  single  footstep, 
because  he  equally  overlooks  that  continuous  way  which 
leads  through  the  intervening  distance  to  some  great,  yet 
practicable  achievement.  But  give  him  time,  and  the 
mere  length  of  a  journey  ought  not  to  repel  the  traveller 
from  his  undertaking,  nor  will  he  resign  the  advantage 
for  which  he  looks  at  its  further  extremity,  till  you  have 
demonstrated  that  one  or  more  of  its  stages  is  utterly  im- 
passable. In  other  words,  there  is  a  blind  infidelity,  as 
well  as  a  blinded  imagination,  and  it  is  difficult  to  say 
whether  the  cause  of  philanthropy  has  suffered  more  from 
the  temerity  of  projectors,  or  from  the  phlegmatic  inert- 
ness of  men,  who,  unable  to  discriminate  between  the  ex- 
perimental and  the  visionary,  are  alike  determined  to  de- 
spise all  and  to  resist  all. 


CHAPTER  XV 

ON  THE  LIKELIEST   PARLIAMENTARY   MEANS    FOR    THE 
ABOLITION   OF   PAUPERISM   IN   ENGLAND 

A  GENTLEMAN  who  is  now  bestowing  much  of  his  atten- 
tion on  the  poor  laws,  when  informed  of  the  speed  and 
facility  wherewith  all  its  compulsory  pauperism  had  been 
extinguished  in  a  certain  parish,  replied,  that  it  might 
be  easy  to  effect  the  deliverance  of  one  parish,  but  that  it 
was  not  so  easy  to  legislate  for  the  deliverance  of  all  Eng- 
land. But  if  an  easy  and  applicable  method  can  be  de- 
vised for  the  parish,  what  is  it  that  the  legislature  has  to 
do?  Simply  to  remove  the  legal  obstructions  that  may 
now  stand  in  the  way  of  the  method  in  question.  Simply 
to  authorize  each  parish  that  so  wills  to  avail  itself  there- 
of. And  should  many,  or  should  all  of  them  at  length 
go  forth  upon  the  enterprise,  and  succeed  in  it,  then  the 
extinction  of  this  sore  evil  over  the  country  at  large,  in- 
stead of  being  immediately  referable  to  the  impetus  of 
that  one  blow,  which  has  been  struck  against  it  by  the 
lifting  up  of  the  arm  of  parliament,  should  be  referred  to 
a  cause  that  is  far  more  commensurate  with  the  vastness 
of  the  achievement,  even  to  the  power  of  those  multiplied 
energies  that  have  been  set  at  work  throughout  the  land, 

each  of  which,  however,  has  only  its  own  separate  and 

249 


250  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

limited  object  to  overtake,  and  each  of  which  acteth  in- 
dependently of  all  the  rest. 

However  obvious  this  may  be,  yet  we  have  often 
thought  that  the  overlooking  of  it  is  one  main  cause  of 
that  despair  and  helplessness  which  are  felt  by  many  of 
our  legislators  on  the  subject  of  this  great  national  dis- 
temper. .  .  .  He  who  has  a  place  and  an  authority 
in  the  councils  of  the  empire,  takes  a  wide  and  extended 
survey  over  the  whole  of  it,  and  by  a  sort  of  fancied 
ubiquity  he  brings  himself  into  contact  with  all  the  strug- 
gles and  difficulties  of  all  the  parishes,  and  he  sometimes 
feels  as  if  the  weight  and  the  labor  of  what  is  indeed  a 
very  operose  concern  were  wholly  accumulated  upon  his 
own  person,  and,  instead  of  regarding  pauperism  as  that 
which  can  only  be  put  to  death  by  inches,  and  with  the 
help  of  many  separate  hands,  he  sees  it  as  standing  forth 
in  single  combat,  a  hydra  of  dread  and  direful  encounter, 
at  the  sight  of  whom  every  heart  fails,  and  every  arm  is 
paralyzed. 

And  akin  to  this  delusion  is  the  imagination  on  the  part, 
we  believe,  of  many,  that  the  only  way  of  proceeding 
against  pauperism  is  by  imperative  enactments,  which  be- 
hoved to  be  instantly  and  simultaneously  followed  up  by 
a  change  of  administration  all  over  the  country.  .  .  . 
And  so  it  is  that  an  attempt  on  the  poor  laws  is  dreaded  by 
many  as  the  sure  precursor  of  a  revolution;  nor  is  it  seen 
what  the  possible  way  is  by  which  this  question  can  be 
prosecuted  with  the  same  wisdom,  and  withal  in  the  same 
calmness,  and  with  the  same  happy  results,  as  have  often 
been  experienced  in  the  treatment  of  other  questions,  and 


PARLIAMENT  AND  PAUPERISM  251 

that  through  a  long  era  of  peaceful  and  progressive  im- 
provement in  the  domestic  policy  of  England. 

We  should  hold  it  to  be  highly  advisable,  that  any 
enactment  which  might  be  made  on  the  subject  of  pauper- 
ism shall  not  be  one  that  brings  a  certain  force  upon  all  of 
the  parishes,  but  simply  one  that  allows  a  certain  freedom 
to  any  of  the  parishes;  not  one  that  puts  forth  a  law,  but 
one  that  holds  out  a  leave;  and  a  leave,  too,  only  to  be 
granted  on  such  a  free  and  extended  concurrence  of  house- 
holders in  the  application  for  it,  as  to  be  itself  a  guarantee, 
that  however  odious  a  general  movement  against  pauper- 
ism may  be  over  the  country  at  large,  yet  that  each  par- 
ticular movement  is,  within  the  limits  of  its  own  sepa- 
rate parish,  abundantly  popular. 

[An  illustration  is  given  from  the  permissive  legisla- 
tion, by  which  the  commons  of  England  were  gradually 
enclosed  for  more  perfect  culture.  But  it  should  be  noted 
that  in  Scotland,  according  to  Lamond,  under  such  a  per- 
missive system,  the  parishes  gradually  introduced  out- 
door relief, — "  pauperism,"  as  our  author  calls  it.] 

There  are  three  distinct  objects  that  should  be  compre- 
hended in  the  provisions  of  the  general  act.  .  .  .  The 
first  relates  to  the  act  of  concurrence  that  should  be  re- 
quired of  any  parish  ere  that  parish  shall  be  empowered 
to  make  a  radical  change  in  its  management  of  the  poor. 
The  second  relates  to  the  nature  of  the  change.  And  the 
third,  to  the  way  in  which  the  Parliament  and-the  people 
of  England  are  to  be  satisfied,  both  at  the  outset,  and 
through  all  the  subsequent  stages  of  this  retracing  move- 


252  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

merit,  that  its  effects  are  so  beneficial,  and  more  particu- 
larly to  the  poor  themselves,  as  to  be  altogether  worthy  of 
a  humane  and  civilized  nation. 

To  grant  allowance  for  the  enclosure  of  a  parish  com- 
mon, Parliament  expects  the  consent  of  four-fifths  of 
the  proprietors,  in  number  and  value.  To  grant  leave 
for  the  new-modelling  of  its  pauperism,  we  should  not 
object  to  the  consent  of  a  larger  proportion  than  this  of 
all  the  parish  householders,  who  are  not  paupers  them- 
selves, being  required  by  Parliament. 

[Reference  is  made  to  several  acts  which  permitted 
local  changes  on  a  similar  principle.] 

It  is  obvious  that  the  larger  the  consent  is  that  shall 
be  required  by  the  general  act,  the  fewer  will  be  the  par- 
ishes who  can  avail  themselves  of  its  provisions.  .  .  . 
It  were  well  that  this  act  was  loaded  on  purpose  with  a 
condition  that  is  not  easily  satisfied;  and  thus  trials  will 
be  restricted,  in  the  first  instance,  to  a  few  of  the  easiest 
and  likeliest  of  the  parishes.  We  do  not  want  the  whole 
of  England  to  be  thrown  adrift,  at  the  bidding  of  a  yet 
untried  hypothesis.  But  we  want  England  to  put  herself 
to  school.  We  think  that  she  needs  to  go  to  school,  and 
when  looking  attentively  at  those  trial  parishes  she  is,  in 
fact,  learning  the  first  lessons,  and  acquiring  the  sound 
rudiments  of  a  sound  education.  .  .  . 

There  are  many  distinct  advantages  in  a  very  large 
concurrence  of  householders  being  required  at  the  out- 
set. .  .  . 

First,  it  confines  the  operation  of  the  proposed  act  to 


PAKLIAMENT   AND   PAUPERISM  253 

those  parishes  where  the  experiment  is  most  popular,  and 
so  removes  it  altogether  from  those  regions  where  its  very 
obnoxiousness  to  the  community  at  large  would  be  a  seri- 
ous impediment  in  the  way  of  its  success.  .  .  . 

But,  secondly,  a  large  concurrence  in  favor  of  the  new 
method  is  our  best  guarantee  for  a  resolute  and  powerful 
agency  to  carry  on  the  execution  of  it.  We  should  not 
despair  of  a  most  efficient  vestry  in  any  parish  for  con- 
ducting aright  the  business  of  its  gratuitous  charity  where 
there  had  been  a  nearly  unanimous  consent  to  the  abolition 
of  its  legal  charity.  There  is  no  fear  of  any  parish  which 
has  thus  singled  out,  and  made  a  spectacle  of  itself,  that 
it  will  not  acquit  itself  well,  and  at  length  demonstrate 
to  all  its  neighbors  that  without  a  poor-rate,  and  without 
any  painful  sacrifice  at  all,  it  can  boast  a  happier  and 
better  population  than  any  of  those  who  are  around 
it.  ... 

And,  thirdly,  .  .  .  this  does  not  eventually  exclude 
the  great  body  and  majority  of  England  from  the  pro- 
posed reformation.  It  only  prepares  the  way  for  it.  The 
truth  is,  that  should  so  few  as  twenty  parishes  come  for- 
ward, under  the  first  general  act,  and  should  their  experi- 
ment prosper,  it  will  do  more  to  assure  the  hearts  and  the 
hopes  of  the  people  of  England  than  a  thousand  disserta- 
tions. .  .  . 

It  is  thus  by  a  series  of  general  acts,  as  by  a  series  of 
stepping-stones,  England  may  emerge  out  of  all  the  dif- 
ficulties of  her  present  pauperism.  The  very  first  foot- 
step that  she  takes  is  on  a  firm  basis,  and  all  along  she 
moves  by  a  way  that  is  strictly  experimental.  Through- 


254  CHRISTIAN   AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

out  every  inch  of  her  wary  progress  she  never  needs  to 
abandon  the  light  of  observation;  and  on  the  whole  of 
this  interesting  walk  over  her  provinces,  and,  at  length, 
till  she  reaches  her  own  mighty  metropolis  in  triumph,  is 
she  guided  from  one  achievement  to  another,  and  by  the 
way  she  best  loves,  because  the  way  that  is  most  eminently 
congenial  with  the  sober  and  practical  character  of  her 
undertaking. 

In  regard  to  the  nature  of  the  change,  we  should 
leave  untouched  the  condition  and  the  rights  of  all  who, 
at  the  time  of  its  being  entered  upon,  are  permanent  pau- 
pers. There  should  be  no  dismissal  of  any  who  would  not 
have  been  dismissed  under  the  old  regimen.  It  is,  of 
course,  quite  fair  to  scrutinize  their  means  and  resources 
to  the  uttermost,  and  on  any  discovery  of  their  being  ade- 
quate to  their  own  support,  or  on  any  actual  improvement 
that  may  have  taken  place  in  their  circumstances,  by 
which  they  are  enabled  to  provide  for  themselves,  it  is 
perfectly  right  that  their  names  should  be  expunged  from 
the  roll.  .  .  .  The  change  of  treatment,  whatever  it 
may  be,  should  apply  exclusively  to  those  who  apply  for 
parochial  relief,  either  for  the  first  time,  or  apply  for  it 
anew,  after  they  have  been  made  to  do  without  it  for  a 
period.  .  .  . 

The  first  change  that  we  should  propose  in  the  parochial 
system,  for  the  management  of  the  poor,  is  that  in  refer- 
ence to  every  new  applicant  the  special  power  of  jus- 
tices to  order  relief  should  be  altogether  taken  away. 
The  parish  vestry  would,  in  this  case,  be  the  ultimate 
and  the  only  place  of  application,  and  their  decision, 


PARLIAMENT   AND   PAUPERISM  255 

both  as  to  relief  and  as  to  the  amount  of  it,  should  be 
final.  .  .  . 

The  second  change  that  we  should  propose  relates  to 
the  fund  out  of  which  the  new  applicants  shall  be  met. 
.  .  .  Now  we  hold  it  essential  to  a  sound  and  abiding 
reformation  of  pauperism  .  .  .  that  the  power  which 
the  church-wardens  and  overseers  have  of  making  a  rate, 
either  with  or  without  the  concurrence  of  the  inhabitants, 
for  the  purpose  of  meeting  any  fresh  applications,  shall 
henceforth  cease,  and  that,  if  any  fund  be  judged  neces- 
sary in  order  to  provide  for  new  cases,  it  shall,  under  a 
public  and  parochial  administration,  be  altogether  a  gratu- 
itous, and  in  no  shape  a  legal  or  compulsory,  one.  For  the 
purpose  of  constituting  such  a  fund,  the  minister  and 
church-wardens  may  be  empowered  to  have  a  weekly  col- 
lection at  the  church-doors,  or  what  is  now  gathered  in 
the  shape  of  sacrament  money  may  be  made  over  to  it, 
or  donations  may  be  received  from  individuals  in  all 
which  ways  the  revenue  of  a  Kirk-Session  in  Scotland 
is  mainly  upheld.  .  .  . 

The  third  change  that  would  be  required  should  be  in 
the  constitution  of  the  vestry. 

[The  recommendation  is  that  the  vestry  be  enlarged  to 
include  the  minister,  church-wardens,  and  even  large  con- 
tributors. .  .  .] 

But  what  is  this  rational  principle?  Have  we  a  right 
to  fancy  it,  and  go  abroad  with  the  phantasy  over  the 
land?  Is  it  not  possible  that  after  all  it  may  be  a 
wrong  onset  that  we  make  ?  and  how  are  we  to  know  that 


256  CHRISTIAN   AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

under  the  operation  of  this  boasted  panacea  we  might  not 
add  to  the  number  and  sorely  aggravate  the  wretchedness 
of  our  suffering  families? 

Xow  to  meet  these  questions,  we  affirm  of  the  process 
that  it  is  strictly  a  tentative  one.  It  is  not  the  dictatorial 
imposition  of  a  method  on  the  part  of  one  who  bids  an 
implicit  acquiescence  therein.  It  is  the  confident  recom- 
mendation of  a  method,  on  the  part  of  one  who  asks  that 
it  may  be  submitted  to  the  touchstone  of  experience,  and 
who  is  willing  to  submit  himself  to  the  guidance  and  the 
correction  of  this  safe  school-master.  There  is  all  the  dif- 
ference in  the  world  between  rashly  presuming  on  the 
truth  and  respectfully  feeling  our  way  to  it.  A  very  few 
initial  attempts  will  decide  the  question  and  set  it  at  rest. 
It  is  a  question  between  the  free  and  gratuitous  and  the 
compulsory  or  legal  systems  of  charity.  The  latter  has 
been  tried  all  over  England  and  has  been  found  wanting. 
Let  the  former  be  fairly  and  fully  tried  in  a  few  parishes 
of  England,  and  abandoned  if  they  become  sensibly  worse, 
and  do  not  become  sensibly  better.  It  is  our  own  belief 
that  every  year  will  witness  an  addition  to  her  trophies 
and  her  triumphs.  .  .  .  But  should  her  career  not  be 
a  prosperous  one,  she  will  share  the  fate  of  her  many  pred- 
ecessors— she  will  vanish,  with  other  expedients,  into 
oblivion,  and  the  Parliament  of  England  can  withdraw  its 
sanction  when  the  people  of  England  have  ceased  from 
their  demand  for  her.  .  .  . 

There  ought  to  be  parliamentary  commissioners,  not 
for  the  purpose  of  receiving  appeals  on  the  question  of 
relief,  for  this  would  be  reviving  the  present  system  in  an- 


PARLIAMENT  AND  PAUPERISM  257 

other  form,  but  for  the  purpose  of  noting  and  reporting 
how  it  is  that  those  parochial  communities  really  do  thrive, 
where  the  parochial  managers  have  been  left  to  their  own 
unfettered  discretion,  how  it  fares  with  the  families,  and 
whether  the  charity  of  law  be  so  replaced  by  sobriety 
among  the  poor,  and  sympathy  among  the  rich,  that  the 
charity  of  nature  is  more  than  enough  to  meet  all  those 
apprehended  deficiencies  which,  in  the  distance,  look  so 
big  and  fearful.  If  they  can  report  any  abuse  more  fla- 
grant in  the  trial  parishes  than  now  occur  on  the  average 
throughout  the  parishes  of  England;  if  they  can  quote 
instances  there  of  shameful  neglect  and  cruelty  which 
under  the  present  style  of  administration  would  not  have 
been  realized;  if  they  can  speak  adversely  of  the  scheme, 
either  because  of  the  particular  evils  of  it  which  it  shall 
be  in  their  power  to  specify,  or  because  of  that  darker 
aspect  of  misery  which  stands  visibly  out  on  those  paro- 
chial families  that  are  under  its  operation,  then  let  such 
testimony  to  the  effects  of  the  gratuitous  system  be  its 
condemnation.  But  if,  instead  of  this,  they  can  allege, 
as  the  fruits  of  it,  an  increased  contentment,  and  cheerful- 
ness and  good-will,  a  more  manifest  kindliness  of  heart 
on  the  part  of  the  higher  orders;  and  this  returned  by  a 
kindness  and  gratitude  on  the  part  of  the  lower  orders, 
that  had  been  before  unknown,  a  more  frequent  inter- 
course between  the  various  classes  of  society ;  and  withal, 
such  an  impulse  on  the  side  of  popular  education,  as  to 
be  sensibly  raising  the  mind  and  the  habits  of  the  peas- 
antry; if  they  can  further  attest,  that  never  had  they  been 

called  to  witness  the  spectacle  of  distress  left  to  suffer  for 
17 


258  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

a  season,  except  in  the  cases  of  guilt  or  of  idleness,  when 
it  was  wise  that  nature  should  be  left  to  her  own  correc- 
tives and  her  own  cures;  and  that  even  then  starvation 
was  a  bugbear,  which,  with  all  their  most  diligent  search 
after  it  they  had  in  no  one  instance  been  able  to  embody ; 
surely,  if  such  shall  be  their  testimony,  the  voice  of  Parlia- 
ment will  soon  be  at  one  with  the  voice  of  the  people,  and 
both  must  unite  in  stamping  their  acceptance  on  a  system 
so  fully  tried,  and  so  nobly  vindicated. 

It  is  not  wrong  to  demand  proof  for  the  soundness  or 
efficacy  of  any  expedient,  but  surely  it  is  wrong  to  refuse 
the  demand  of  him  who  seeks  that  a  proof  shall  be  led. 
.  .  .  Every  experiment  lands  in  experience.  An  ex- 
periment may  be  just  as  instructive  by  its  failure  as  by 
its  success;  and  if  there  be  parishes  in  England  that  are 
sanguine  enough  to  encounter  its  difficulties,  or  willing 
to  brave  the  hazards  of  an  eventual  disgrace,  on  what 
possible  grounds  of  reason  or  expediency  should  the  op- 
portunity be  withheld  from  them?  It  interferes  with 
nothing.  It  hinders  nothing.  Those  who  desire  it  not 
are  not  disturbed  by  it ;  and  each  corporation,  whether  of 
parish  or  township,  is  left  to  the  repose  of  its  own  settled 
prejudices,  till  the  light  of  ocular  demonstration  may 
chance  to  awaken  it.  ...  Meanwhile  all  the  other  de- 
vices of  reform  and  regulation  might  go  on  as  busily  as 
before. 

And  nothing  it  appears  to  us,  can  be  more  simple  than 
how  to  suit  the  law  of  settlement  to  a  parish  which  shall 
come  under  the  new  system.  A  stranger  acquires  no  right 
in  such  a  parish,  though  he  should  fulfil  all  those  condi- 


PARLIAMENT   AND    PAUPERISM  259 

tions  on  which  a  settlement  is  acquired  in  other  parishes. 
He  may,  or  he  may  not,  share  with  the  other  parishioners 
in  the  gratuitous  ministrations  of  the  vestry,  but  neither 
he  nor  they  should  have  any  right  to  relief,  after  that  the 
human  care  had  been  devolved  on  the  free  sympathies  of 
our  nature.  It  is  thus  that  a  trial  parish  would  not  import 
any  burden  by  the  influx  of  strangers  from  the  country  at 
large,  and  the  fair  reciprocity  therefore  is,  that  the  country 
should  not  be  burdened  by  any  efflux  from  the  parish.  As 
there  can  be  no  right  acquired  by  one  removing  to  a  trial 
parish,  neither  should  there  be  any  right  acquired  by  one 
removing  from  it.  And  let  us  not,  therefore,  look  upon 
him  as  an  unprivileged  outcast  from  the  securities  of  civil- 
ized life.  He  moves  at  his  own  choice,  and  with  his  eye 
open  to  his  circumstances;  and  he  is  richer  far  by  trusting 
to  his  own  resources,  and  by  knowing  that  he  has  nothing 
else  to  trust  to,  than  he,  who,  along  with  the  rights,  has 
also  the  temptations  of  pauperism.  Such  a  man  will  find 
his  way,  and  it,  on  the  whole,  will  be  a  way  of  greater  suf- 
ficiency and  comfort  than  any  which  law  provides  for  the 
nurslings  of  her  artificial  charity.  The  emigrants  from  a 
trial  parish  into  any  other  part  of  England,  will  exem- 
plify the  general  habit  of  those  who  have  acquired  no 
settlement  in  the  place  of  their  residence,  yet  choose 
not  to  leave  it;  a  habit,  it  has  oft  been  remarked,  of 
greater  industry  and  virtue  than  is  averaged  in  the  mass 
of  the  population. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

ON  THE  LIKELIEST  PAROCHIAL  MEANS  FOR  THE 
ABOLITION   OF  PAUPERISM  IN  ENGLAND 

THE  first  obstacle  in  the  way  of  entering  upon  a  process 
for  the  extirpation  of  pauperism  in  any  parish  is  that  the 
difficulty  of  it  will  be  greatly  overrated.  The  present 
and  the  palpable  thing  is  a  large  annual  sum  that  needs  to 
be  levied  for  the  support  of  the  existing  generation  of 
paupers,  besides  the  very  ponderous  establishment  that  has 
been  raised  and  which  continues  to  be  required  for  their 
accommodation.  It  is  quite  obvious  what  an  unwieldy 
concern  it  would  be  were  the  assessment  forthwith  to 
cease,  and  provision  to  be  made  on  the  instant  for  all  those 
actual  poor  from  whom  their  accustomed  supplies  had 
thus  been  suddenly  withdrawn.  There  is  scarcely  a  body 
of  parochial  managers  in  England  that  would  not  shrink 
from  such  an  undertaking;  and  without  reflecting  for  a 
time  on  the  real  difference  that  there  is  between  this  under- 
taking and  the  one  which  we  have  suggested,  they  look 
upon  both  with  the  same  kind  of  fearfulness  and  almost 
with  nearly  equal  degrees  of  it.  They  measure  the  weight 
and  labor  of  the  new  enterprise  by  the  weight  of  the  pres- 
ent pauperism  that  is  now  before  their  eyes;  though,  in 
fact,  there  is  not  one  fraction  of  it  with  which  the  new  sys- 

260 


THE   PARISH   AND   PAUPERISM  2G1 

tern  has  necessarily  anything  to  do.  ...  It  is  only  with 
new  applicants  for  relief  that  the  new  system  has  any 
task  to  perform,  not  with  the  full-grown  pauperism  of  the 
present  generation^  but  with  the  embryo  pauperism  of 
the  next.  .  .  ,<^,  ''With  the  management  that  is  set  up 
to  meet  and  to  anticipate  the  eventual  pauperism  the  busi- 
ness comes  on  gradually.  At  first  there  is  none.  It  does 
not  begin  but  with  the  first  applicant  who  offers  himself, 
and  he  finds  you  at  perfect  leisure  to  attend  to  him;  to 
take  up  his  case,  and  most  thoroughly  to  investigate  it; 
to  calculate  his  means  and  his  facilities;  to  make  inquiry 
after  his  relatives;  to  ascertain  what  work  might  be  pro- 
vided for  him;  to  arrange,  perhaps,  some  method  with  a 
neighbor,  as  cordially  disposed  against  pauperism  as  you, 
for  taking  him  into  employment,  and  making  his  industry 
available  still  to  his  maintenance ;  to  shift  away  his  appli- 
cation by  some  temporary  aid  from  the  purse  of  unseen 
charity;  in  a  word,  to  ply  every  expedient  for  disposing  of 
him  better  than  by  admitting  him  on  the  roll  of  your  new 
pauperism,  under  that  new  economy  which  it  is  now  your 
earnest  concern  to  administer  well./^  After  the  first  has 
been  disposed  of,  a  second  comes  at  'a  longer  or  shorter  in- 
terval, and  he  finds  you  still  better  prepared  for  him  than 
before ;  more  skilled  in  the  treatment  of  such  applications ; 
more  intelligent  about  the  resources  of  humble  life ;  more 
able  to  acquit  yourselves  prudently  and  even  popularly, 
by  every  new  act  of  intercourse  with  the  poor;  more 
rich  in  experience  and  knowledge,  and,  withal,  more  dex- 
terous in  the  talent,  not  of  so  shifting  the  request  away 
from  you,  as  that  your  petitioner  shall  starve,  but  of  so 


262  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

shifting  it  away  from  you  as  that  he  shall  be  in  a  better 
condition  than  if  he  had  been  made  a  pensioner  of  yours. 
.  .  .  Both  the  facility  and  the  success  will  very  much 
astonish  yourselves;  and  by  the  time  the  pauperism  on 
the  poor-rate  has  all  died  away,  you  will  find  it  replaced 
by  a  pauperism  both  so  mild  in  character  and  so  moderate 
in  the  amount  of  it,  that  out  of  free-will  offerings,  and  of 
these  alone,  all  its  expenses  will  be  cheerfully  borne. 

And  there  is  a  very  important  difference  between  the 
old  and  the  new  administration,  the  practical  operation 
of  which  you  are  not  able  to  appreciate  now,  but  in  which 
you  will  soon  experience  that  there  is  really  all  the  might 
and  marvellous  efficacy  of  a  charm.  "What  is  now  de- 
manded as  a  right  will  then  be  preferred  as  a  request. 
.  .  .  Now  the  use  which  you  ought  to  make  of  this 
difference  is  not  to  bid  any  one  parochial  applicant  sternly 
away  from  you,  because  now  you  have  the  power;  but  to 
give  courteous  entertainment  to  them  all.  When  a  fellow 
man  comes  into  your  presence,  and  tells  you  of  want  or  of 
disease  in  his  family,  you  are  not  to  "  hide  yourself  from 
your  own  flesh."  It  will  always  be  your  part,  and  more 
especially  at  the  moment  of  transition  to  a  system  of  char- 
ity which  is  yet  untried,  patiently  to  listen  to  every  case, 
and  calmly  to  investigate,  and  mildly  to  advise,  and  to 
mix  up  the  utmost  civility  and  temper  with  your  wise  and 
firm  prosecution  of  the  matter  which  has  been  submitted  to 
you.  Now  it  is  when  so  employed  that  you  will  come 
to  feel,  and  that  very  speedily,  too,  the  breath  of  another 
spirit  altogether,  in  your  intercourse  and  dealings  with  the 
poor,  than  that  by  which  they  wont  to  be  formerly  ani- 


THE   PARISH   AND   PAUPERISM  263 

mated.  At  present  there  is  a  jealousy  between  the  two 
classes,  upholden  by  a  sense  of  right  upon  the  one  side, 
and  by  a  dread  of  rapacity  upon  the  other.  But  very  soon, 
under  the  new  regimen,  will  the  one  party  come  down 
from  their  insolence,  and  the  other  party  from  that  dis- 
tant and  defensive  attitude  which  they  now  think  it  nec- 
essary to  maintain.  .  .  . 

And  it  should  be  adverted  to  here  that  agreeably  to 
the  scheme  which  we  have  ventured  to  recommend,  no 
parish  at  the  first  can  embark  on  this  retracing  process 
from  legal  to  gratuitous  charity,  without  a  very  large  con- 
currence of  householders  in  its  favor.  .  .  .  There  will 
be  more  both  of  power  and  willingness  among  the  rich. 
There  will  be  less  both  of  need  and  of  expectancy  among 
the  poor.  The  vestry,  in  fact,  might  very  easily  so  man- 
age as  at  length  to  find,  that  even  their  office,  as  the  ad- 
ministrators of  the  parochial  fund,  shall  be  wellnigh 
superseded;  and  that  in  regard  at  least  to  the  affairs  of 
parochial  indigence,  the  whole  economy  of  a  parish  can 
be  well  and  prosperously  conducted,  not  only  without  any 
legal  charity  but  without  even  the  semblance  of  it,  in  any 
public  charity  at  all. 

But  another  fear  is,  that  however  sufficient  the  means 
may  turn  out  under  the  proposed  system,  the  management 
will  be  so  very  laborious  as  to  leave  no  room  for  hoping 
that  it  can  long  be  persevered  in.  Now  this,  too,  is  a  bug- 
bear, and,  if  possible,  a  still  more  airy  and  unsubstantial 
one  than  the  former.  The  only  strenuous  management 
that  is  at  all  required  will  be  at  the  outset,  where  each 
case  ought  to  be  fearlessly  met,  and  sifted  to  the  utter- 


264  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

most,  and  every  right  expedient  bethought  of  and  tried, 
that,  if  possible,  it  may  be  shifted  aside  from  the  parochial 
fund,  and  devolved  in  a  better  way  on  the  thrift  and  labor 
of  the  applicant  himself,  on  the  duty  of  his  relatives,  or 
on  the  charities  of  private  benevolence.  .  .  .  When 
the  people  come  to  perceive  that  this  is  the  way  in  which 
their  applications  are  met,  they  simply,  in  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  instances,  cease  to  apply.  Those  who 
are  conscious  of  means  which  they  know  that  it  is  in  the 
power  of  a  careful  scrutiny  to  detect,  will  forbear  to  offer 
themselves.  They  who  are  idly  disposed  will  shrink  from 
the  hazard  of  having  their  plea  refuted  by  some  employ- 
ment being  put  into  their  hands,  which  they  would  rather 
decline.  Some  who  have  kind  relatives  or  neighbors  will 
rather  continue  to  draw  from  them  in  secret  than  subject 
their  private  matters  to  the  inquisition  of  a  vestry.  .  .  . 

If  the  experiment  shall  prosper  it  will  not  be  because 
of  the  great  supplies  which  are  raised,  but  because  of  the 
great  care  which  has  been  observed  in  the  administration 
of  them.  .  .  . 

Though  the  private  liberality  of  the  rich  in  a  parish 
to  its  poor  ranks  as  one  of  those  expedients,  and  is  much 
to  be  preferred  over  that  open  and  visible  distribution 
that  is  so  fitted  both  to  corrupt  and  degrade  the  objects 
of  it,  yet  may  the  rich  also  be,  to  a  certain  degree,  the 
instruments  of  the  very  same  mischief  that  we  have  now 
charged  on  an  incautious  public  administration.  They 
ought  never  to  forget  that  the  best  economic  gift  which 
can  possibly  be  rendered  to  the  lower  orders  is  a  habit  of 
self-respect  ami  self-dependence;  and  for  this  purpose 


THE    PARISH   AND   PAUPERISM  265 

they  ought  not  to  disdain  a  free  and  frequent  intercourse 
with  them.  This  of  itself  will  go  far  to  elevate  the  mind 
and  the  manners  of  our  peasantry ;  and  it  is  a  very  great 
mistake  that  the  visit  of  rank  or  affluence  to  a  poor  man's 
cottage  is  not  welcomed  unless  it  be  followed  up  by  some 
beggarly  ministration.  AVherever  a  case  of  obvious  and 
ascertained  distress  meets  the  philanthropist  on  his  walk 
it  is  his  part  to  approve  that  his  benevolence  is  real  by 
"  willingness  to  distribute,"  by  "  readiness  to  communi- 
cate." But  he  should  recollect  that  there  are  also  other 
topics  than  those  of  mere  almsgiving  upon  which  he 
might  most  pertinently  and  most  profitably  hold  fellow- 
ship with  his  humbler  brethren  of  the  species,  and  shortly 
earn  the  confidence  and  regard  of  all  his  neighborhood. 
The  education  of  their  families;  the  good  order  of  their 
houses;  the  little  schemes  of  economy  and  management 
in  which  he  requests  their  co-operation ;  the  parish  bank, 
for  which  he  has  to  solicit  their  agency  and  their  con- 
tributions; the  counsel,  the  service,  the  little  presents  of 
courtesy,  by  which  he  does  not  sink  but  signalize  them; 
the  cheap  and  simple  attentions  by  which  the  cottage  chil- 
dren can  be  made  happy,  and  their  parents  grateful ;  those 
thousand  nameless  graces  and  benignities  by  which  the 
accomplished  female  can  light  up  a  moral  gladness  in  the 
hamlet  which  she  has  selected  as  the  theatre,  both  of  many 
duties  and  of  many  friendships.  There  is  a  way  of  prose- 
cuting all  these  without  alimenting  the  rapacity  or  the 
sordidness  of  our  laboring  classes,  a  way  that  is  best  learned 
in  the  school  of  experience ;  and  after,  perhaps,  the  many 
blunders  which  have  been  committed,  and  the  many  mor- 


266  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

tifying  disappointments  which  have  been  sustained  by  the 
young  practitioner  in  the  art  of  well-doing.  It  is  not  by 
money  alone  that  he  is  to  manifest  his  kindness.  There 
are  innumerable  other  ways,  and  better  ways  of  doing  it, 
and  in  the  prosecution  of  which  he  might,  in  truth,  refine 
and  heighten  that  delicacy  which  he  else  would  overbear. 
Let  there  be  but  good-will  in  his  heart;  and  this,  amid 
all  his  forbearance  in  giving,  nay,  amid  all  his  refusals, 
when  he  apprehends  a  cunning  or  a  corruption  in  the  ob- 
ject of  them — this  will  at  length  shine  forth  upon  the 
people,  in  the  lustre  of  its  own  moral  evidence,  and  will 
give  for  him  an  ascendency  that  might  be  convertible  to 
the  fine  result  of  their  permanent  amelioration.  .  .  . 

The  truth  is  that  under  a  good  management,  though 
with  very  slender  means,  the  first  difficulty  which  shall 
meet  the  vestry  will  not  be  how  to  find  the  adequate  sup- 
plies, but  how  to  dispose  of  the  unappropriated  and  ac- 
cumulating surplus.  .  • .  .  In  these  circumstances  the 
clergyman  who  is  aware  of  the  mischiefs  of  public  charity 
might  be  tempted  to  lay  an  arrest  on  the  liberality  of  his 
parishioners  and  hearers.  But  better  far  would  it  be  that 
he  kept  this  liberality  agoing,  nay,  stimulated  it  the  more, 
and  then  impressed  such  a  direction  on  the  produce  of  it 
as  went  not  to  corrupt  the  people,  but  to  elevate  and  to 
moralize  them.  He  might  do  them  harm  by  a  large  public 
distribution  for  the  relief  of  indigence,  whether  the  means 
of  it  were  provided  by  a  poor-rate  or  free-will  offerings. 
But  there  is  no  harm  in  thus  meeting  certain  of  the  help- 
less and  involuntary  sufferings  of  our  nature.  There  is 
none  in  so  signalizing  the  dumb,  and  the  blind,  and  the 


THE   PARISH   AND   PAUPERISM  267 

lunatic  of  the  parish.  There  is  none,  but  quite  the  con- 
trary, in  bestowing  of  this  spare  and  superfluous  revenue 
in  the  erection  or  the  support  of  village  schools,  and  so 
adding  still  to  your  securities  against  pauperism  by  widen- 
ing, through  education,  the  moral  distance  between  the 
habits  of  the  people  and  a  condition  so  degrading. 

And  there  is  something  more  to  be  taken  into  account 
than  the  eventual  good  of  such  a  destination.  It  lends 
a  most  important  facility  to  your  present  administration. 
It  enables  you  to  meet  every  applicant  for  relief  with  an 
argument  that  will  moderate  the  tone  of  his  demand  and 
perhaps  shame  him  altogether  away  from  it.  You  can 
then  tell  him  that  by  his  forbearance,  he  leaves  you  in  bet- 
ter condition  for  the  relief  of  families  still  more  helpless 
than  his  own;  that  he,  in  fact,  will  be  a  virtual  contributor 
to  the  good  of  humanity,  and  to  the  interest  of  the  rising 
generation,  simply  by  shifting  for  himself  and  leaving 
your  fund  entire  and  untouched  for  higher  charities;  that 
he  ought,  on  this  ground,  to  make  common  cause  with  you, 
and  that  he  renders  a  most  important  co-operation  when 
he  ceases  to  be  burdensome  and  ministers  with  his  own 
hands  to  his  own  necessities.  .  .  . 

[The  recommendation  of  subdivision  of  parishes  and 
the  careful  personal  work  of  individual  visitors  is  re- 
peated.] 

That  member  of  the  vestry  does  his  business  best,  not 
who  transmits  the  greatest  number  of  applications  from 
his  territory,  but  who  intercepts  the  greatest  number;  and 
who  intercepts  them  not  by  his  stern  and  haughty  nega- 


268  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

tive,  but  by  his  patient  inquiry,  and  his  friendly  argu- 
ment, and  his  kind  offers  of  work,  or  of  interest  on  behalf 
of  the  family.  .  .  . 

His  work  ceases  because  now  the  vis  medicatrix  works 
for  him  with  all  that  primitive  liberty  and  vigor  which  be- 
longs to  her.  His  office  becomes  at  length  a  sinecure,  and 
should  he  choose  to  lay  it  down,  he  may  retire  with  the 
character  of  having  best  done  the  duties  of  a  vestryman, 
because  he  gave  the  vestry  nothing  to  do. 


END  OF  VOL.  H 


PREFACE 

NEAULY  three  years  have  now  elapsed  since  the  publica- 
tion of  the  second  volume  of  this  work,  during  which  time 
circumstances  have  occurred  that  have  induced  its  author 
somewhat  to  change  the  plan  of  the  concluding  volume, 
and  that  have  had  the  effect,  furthermore,  to  retard,  and 
he  fears  also  to  enfeeble  the  execution  of  it.  What  he 
more  particularly  alludes  to  is  the  recent  history  of  those 
popular  combinations  which  have  taken  place  all  over  the 
country,  for  a  rise  of  wages.  The  truth  is  that  he  had 
scarcely  begun  to  investigate  the  connection  between  a 
poor-rate  and  the  price  of  labor,  when  the  latter  of  these 
two  elements,  although  in  a  different  connection,  became 
the  subject  of  a  most  interesting  practical  treatment  by 
Parliament  on  the  one  hand,  and  by  the  population  on  the 
other.  He  has  long  regarded  it  as  one  of  the  most  mis- 
chievous effects  of  the  English  pauperism  that  it  depresses 
the  wages  of  labor,  and  that,  beneath  the  rate  of  its  own 
compensations;  and,  of  course,  as  one  of  the  chief  bless- 
ings to  society  that  would  follow  in  the  train  of  its  abo- 
lition that  we  should  forthwith  behold  a  better  paid  as 
well  as  a  better  principled  class  of  workmen  than  before. 
He  has  ever  been  on  the  side  of  a  more  liberal  remunera- 
tion for  industry.  But  when  the  people  took  this  cause 
into  their  own  hands  and  proceeded  to  enforce  it  in  their 
own  peculiar  way,  he  could  not  but  regret  that  a  cause  so 

269 


270  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

worthy  of  the  highest  efforts,  both  of  philanthropy  and 
patriotism,  should  have  been  dishonored  by  the  outrage 
and  the  violence  wherewith  it  was  associated.  He  has  not, 
therefore,  stepped  out  of  his  course  in  order  to  treat  of 
combinations.  The  subject  has  been  thrown  across  his 
path,  and  he  must  have  turned  aside  if  he  had  shunned 
the  encounter  with  it.  The  workmen  of  England  have 
aggravated,  by  their  own  misconduct,  the  prejudices  of 
the  more  affluent  orders  against  the  cause  of  their  ad- 
vancement in  society.  And  it  might  serve  to  appease 
these  prejudices  of  the  wealthy,  as  wrell  as  to  tranquillize 
the  feelings  and  to  elevate  the  habits  of  the  poor,  if,  in- 
stead of  that  way  of  turbulence  which  they  have  tried  and 
found  so  ineffectual,  they  could  be  made  to  understand 
that  more  excellent  way  upon  which,  without  noise,  or  up- 
roar, or  rebellion,  they  might  raise  the  comfort  and  the 
sufficiency  of  their  own  condition,  and  at  length  attain  to 
a  permanently  higher  status  in  the  commonwealth. 

[The  author  explains  his  desire  to  be  understood  by  the 
working  people,  and  at  the  same  time  to  remove  erroneous 
opinions  of  the  rich.  "  There  is  a  certain  prevalent  im- 
agination among  the  higher  classes  that  the  cheapness  of 
British  labor  lies  at  the  very  foundation  of  our  country's 
prosperity  and  strength.  Now,  in  advocating  the  cause  of 
a  higher  remuneration  for  industry,  we  have  to  combat 
this  imagination." 

At  this  point  he  alludes  to  the  continued  trial  of  his 
parish  principles  in  Glasgow  under  his  successors.  Their 
success  proved  that  the  working  of  his  theory  did  not  rest 
on  his  own  personal  direction  and  ability  of  administra- 
tion, but  on  the  soundness  of  the  principle  itself.] 


VOLUME  III 

CHAPTER  XVII 


THE  difficulties  of  removing  such  a  great  national  evil 
as  pauperism  are  of  two  classes,  which  are  wholly  distinct 
the  one  from  the  other.  .  .  .  The  first  difficulties  are 
those  which  are  presented  by  the  economic  condition  of 
the  lower  orders.  They  are  such  difficulties  as  have  their 
seat  among  the  circumstances  of  the  people.  It  is  the 
imagination  of  many  that  to  do  away  a  legal  provision  for 
indigence  would  be  to  abandon  a  large  population  to  a 
destitution  and  distress  that  were  most  revolting  to  hu- 
manity, and,  in  as  far  as  this  imagination  is  true,  it  offers 
a  most  formidable  difficulty,  and  one,  indeed,  which 
should  foreclose  the  question  altogether.  The  population 
ought  not  to  be  so  abandoned;  and  if,  in  virtue  of  the 
abolition  of  pauperism,  they  shall  become  worse  either  in 
comfort  or  character  than  before,  then  this  abolition  ceases 
to  be  desirable.  We  happen  to  think  that  no  such  con- 
sequence would  ensue,  and  that  on  the  supplies  of  public 
charity  being  withdrawn  there  would  not  only  be  much 
less  of  actual  want  in  the  country,  but  that  this  want 
would  be  sure  to  find  relief,  and  in  a  way  greatly  more 
consistent  both  with  the  comfort  and  virtue  of  families. 

271 


272  CHEISTIAN    AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

[The  second  class  of  difficulties  arises  in  the  minds  of 
members  of  the  ruling  classes.  The  reformer  must  en- 
counter the  prejudices  of  educated  men.] 

They  who  have  the  constitutional  right,  either  to  arrest 
his  proceedings  or  to  allow  of  them,  must  first  be  satisfied; 
and  whether  from  honest  conviction  or  from  the  tenacity 
of  a  wedded  adherence  to  old  and  existing  methods,  they 
may  stand  in  the  way  of  all  innovation.  Ere  he  come  into 
contact  with  the  human  nature  of  the  question  among  the 
poor  themselves,  he  may  have  far  greater  obstacles  against 
him  in  the  law  of  the  question,  and  in  the  obstinate  preju- 
dice or  wilfulness  of  those  men  with  whom  the  right  is 
vested  of  adjudging  or  administering  for  the  poor.  .  .  . 
It  may  be  true  that  there  is  a  system  of  utmost  facility 
which,  if  adopted,  shall  be  of  omnipotent  effect  to  expel 
pauperism  from  a  parish,  and  with  less  want  and  wretched- 
ness among  its  families  than  before;  and  also  true,  that 
there  shall  be  a  weary  struggle  with  the  incredulity  and 
perverse  misconceptions  of  influential  men,  ere  the  sys- 
tem shall  be  suffered  to  have  a  trial.  .  .  . 

At  the  same  time  it  ought  to  be  remembered  that  if  the 
natural  difficulties  of  the  problem  be  so  very  light  and 
conquerable,  its  political  difficulties  must,  of  necessity, 
subside,  and  at  length  vanish  altogether.  It  is  the  imag- 
ination, in  fact,  of  the  greatness  of  its  essential  difficulties 
that  mainly  gives  rise  to  the  opposition  of  our  influential 
men,  or  what  is  still  more  hopeless  than  their  active  oppo- 
sition, the  listlessness  and  apathy  of  their  despair.  Could 
we  succeed  in  proving  that  there  is  really  nothing  in  the 
condition  of  the  lower  orders  which  presents  an  insuper- 


ON    THE    WAGES    OF    LABOR  273 

able  barrier  to  the  abolition  of  pauperism,  the  barrier  of 
prejudice  and  dislike,  on  the  part  of  the  higher  orders,  to 
any  radical  change,  must  finally  give  way.  Truth  may 
be  withstood  long,  but  it  cannot  be  withstood  eternally. 
The  provisions  of  law  will  at  length  be  made  to  accord 
with  the  principles  of  nature;  and  whatever  shall  be 
found  by  experience,  in  the  human  nature  of  the  question, 
to  be  most  wholesome  for  the  people,  the  law  of  the  ques- 
tion must,  in  time,  be  moulded  into  conformity  therewith. 

[Here  is  repeated  the  argument  of  the  previous  volume : 
that  the  vastness  of  the  problem  frightens  men  from  im- 
perial legislation,  while  if  the  task  were  undertaken  by 
gradual  stages  the  difficulties  would  melt  away.] 

But  no  sooner  do  we  get  rid  of  one  antipathy  than  we 
are  instantly  met  by  another.  The  very  men  who  have  no 
credit  for  what  is  great  may  have  no  value  for  what  is 
gradual.  When  to  get  the  better  of  their  incredulity 
about  the  efficacy  of  our  process  we  tell  them  how  slow  it 
is,  then  we  have  just  as  hard  an  encounter  as  before  with 
their  indifference.  ...  In  the  first  instance  there  is 
the  same  unbelief  in  the  possibility  of  all  pauperism  being 
done  away  as  they  would  have  in  a  magical  performance ; 
and  in  the  second  instance,  whatever  is  to  be  done  in  the 
way  of  reformation  has  no  charm  for  them  unless  it  can 
be  done  with  a  rapidity  that  would  be  altogether  magical. 
.  .  .  We  cannot  devise  for  them  a  scheme  that  shall  at 
once  be  moderate  enough  in  its  aim  to  suit  the  narrowness 
of  their  apprehensions  and  at  the  same  time  speedy  enough 
in  its  operation  to  suit  the  extravagance  of  their  wishes. 
18 


274  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

When  they  hear  the  promise  of  a  total  deliverance,  they 
spurn  it  away  from  them  as  romantic.  When  the  ro- 
mance is  mitigated  by  the  proposal  that  the  deliverance 
shall  be  very  gradual,  they  spurn  it  away  from  them 
as  tardy.  .  .  .  It  is  between  those  who  are  hopeless 
and  those  who  are  precipitate  that  it  is  so  difficult 
to  extricate  a  nation  from  the  evils  of  a  wrong  domestic 
economy.  .  . 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  indigence  may  arise  from  two 
sources — either  from  inability  for  work,  or  from  the  in- 
adequacy of  its  wages.  The  original  pauperism  of  Eng- 
land, it  is  said,  was  restricted  to  those  who  were  poor  from 
impotency,  and  it  is  regarded  by  many  as  an  abuse  or  cor- 
ruption of  it,  that  it  should  ever  have  been  extended  to 
able-bodied  laborers  in  order  to  make  up  any  deficiency 
in  their  wages.  Now  the  great  aim  at  present  is  to  repress 
pauperism  within  its  original  limits  by  putting  an  end 
altogether  to  this  latter  application  of  the  poor's  fund, 
thus  separating  between  the  distress  which  age  and  im- 
potency bring  upon  the  laboring  classes,  and  the  distress 
which  is  occasionally  brought  upon  them  by  the  fluctua- 
tions in  the  price  of  labor.  There  are  some  who  would 
be  satisfied  with  the  lopping  off  of  this  last  excrescence 
from  the  system  of  poor  laws  in  England,  while  others 
contemplate  the  possibility  and  admit  the  desirableness 
of  an  ulterior  reformation.  We  think  that  there  is  a 
gradual  process  for  the  extermination  of  the  system  in 
both  its  branches,  which  is  alike  applicable,  and  from  the 
outset  of  it,  to  each  of  them.  Yet  this  does  not  supersede 
the  importance  of  discussing  the  effects  of  a  poor-rate 


ON    THE    WAGES    OF    LABOR  275 

when  applied  in  aid  of  defective  wages.  We  feel,  how- 
ever, that  this  will  require  a  few  preliminary  explana- 
tions. 

The  first  thing  to  be  attended  to  is  the  way  in  which 
the  price  of  any  article  brought  to  market  is  affected  by 
the  variations  of  its  supply  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the 
demand  for  it  on  the  other.  The  holders  of  sugar,  for 
example,  after  having  reserved  what  they  need  for  their 
own  use,  bring  the  whole  surplus  to  market,  where  they 
dispose  of  it  in  return  for  those  other  things  which  they 
do  need.  It  must  be  quite  obvious  that  if  there  be  more 
of  this  sugar  exposed  than  there  is  a  demand  for,  the  great 
force  of  the  competition  will  be  among  the  sellers  to  get 
it  off  their  hands.  Each  will  try  to  outstrip  the  others  by 
holding  out  a  greater  inducement  for  purchasers  to  buy 
from  him,  and  this  he  can  only  do  by  holding  it  out  to 
them  on  cheaper  terms.  It  is  thus  that  each  tries  to  under- 
sell the  rest,  or,  in  other  words,  the  great  supply  of  any 
article  of  exchange  is  always  sure  to  bring  down  the  price 
of  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  let  the  same  article  have  been  spar- 
ingly brought  into  the  market,  insomuch  that,  among  the 
buyers,  there  is  a  demand  for  it  to  a  greater  extent  than 
it  is  to  be  had.  The  force  of  the  competition  now  changes 
place.  It  is  among  the  purchasers  instead  of  the  sellers. 
Each  will  try  to  outstrip  his  neighbors  by  holding  out  a 
larger  inducement  to  the  holders  of  a  commodity  now 
rare,  and,  therefore,  in  more  urgent  request  than  usual. 
This  he  can  only  do  by  offering  a  greater  price  for  it.  It 
is  thus  that  each  tries  to  overbid  the  other,  or,  in  other 


276  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

words,  the  small  supply  of  any  article  of  exchange  is  al- 
ways sure  to  bring  up  the  price  of  it.    .    .    . 

There  is  nought  in  the  interposition  of  money  to  affect 
this  process.  Its  office  is  merely  to  facilitate  the  exchange 
of  commodities.  .  .  . 

[Some  articles  of  consumption  are  more  liable  to  ex- 
treme fluctuations  of  price  than  others.  Generally  speak- 
ing, the  necessaries  of  life  are  far  more  powerfully  af- 
fected in  the  price  of  them  by  a  variation  in  their  quantity 
than  are  the  luxuries  of  life.  If  grain  is  supplied  in  dimin- 
ished quantity  the  price  will  rise  much  more  rapidly  than 
that  of  rum  or  wine,  which  are  luxuries.  If  the  standard 
of  life  is  high  in  a  population,  the  people  can  weather  a 
season  of  high  prices  for  food  by  cutting  off  luxuries  in 
drink  and  dress  and  ornament.  They  will  still  have  food, 
although  they  delay  the  purchase  of  articles  not  entirely 
necessary  to  existence.  Higher  prices  of  food  tend  to 
draw  away  supplies  from  more  distant  markets,  and  thus 
the  want  in  one  country  may  be  met  by  the  superfluity  in 
another.  In  exchange  for  this  importation  of  food  the 
products  of  manufacture  are  exported,  and  foreign  com- 
merce is  stimulated.] 

Wages  form  the  price  of  labor;  and  this  price,  like  that 
of  every  other  commodity,  is  determined  by  the  propor- 
tion which  obtains  between  the  supply  of  it  in  the  market 
and  the  effective  demand  for  it.  Should  the  supply  be 
diminished,  or  the  demand  increase,  the  price  rises. 
Should  the  supply  be  increased,  or  the  demand  slacken, 
the  price  falls.  .  .  . 

Now,  labor  might  be  considered  in  the  light  of  a  mar- 
ketable commodity,  the  supply  of  which  is  measured  by 


ON    THE    WAGES    OF    LABOR  277 

the  number  of  laborers,  and  the  price  of  which  is  regu- 
lated, as  in  other  instances,  by  the  proportion  between 
this  supply  and  the  demand.  This  price  partakes  with 
that  of  the  necessaries  of  life  in  being  liable  to  great  fluctu- 
ation; and,  on  the  same  principle,  too,  but  in  a  sort  of  re- 
verse direction.  It  is  the  urgent  need  of  subsistence  which 
so  raises  articles  of  the  first  necessity,  even  upon  a  very 
slight  shortcoming  from  their  usual  quantity  in  the  mar- 
ket, and  it  is  the  same  urgent  need  of  subsistence  which 
so  lowers  the  price  of  labor,  and  that  upon  a  very  slight 
overplus'in  the  number  of  laborers.  What,  in  fact,  look- 
ing to  one  side  of  the  negotiation,  may  be  called  the  de- 
mand of  the  capitalists  for  labor — when  looking  to  the 
other  side  of  it  may  be  called  the  demand  of  the  laborers 
for  employment;  and,  in  this  latter  demand,  there  may 
be  all  the  importunity  and  vehemence  of  a  demand  for  the 
necessaries  of  life.  .  .  .  Men  must  have  subsistence; 
and  if  employment  be  the  essential  stepping-stone  to  this, 
men  must  have  employment ;  and  thus  it  is  that  capitalists 
have  the  same  control  over  workmen,  when  there  is  an 
excess  in  their  number,  which  the  holders  of  the  neces- 
saries of  life  have  over  their  customers,  when  there  is  a  de- 
ficiency in  the  crop.  And  so  the  price  of  labor,  too,  is  a 
most  tremulously  variable  element,  and  has  as  wide  a 
range  of  fluctuation  as  the  price  of  corn.  A  very  small 
excess  in  the  number  of  laborers  will  create  a  much  greater 
proportional  reduction  in  their  wages.  Should  twenty 
thousand  weavers  of  muslin  be  adequate,  on  a  fair  recom- 
pense for  their  work,  to  meet  the  natural  demand  that 
there  is  in  that  branch  of  manufacture,  an  additional  thou- 


278  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

sand  of  these  unemployed,  and  going  about  with  their 
solicitations  and  offers  among  the  master-manufacturers, 
would  bring  a  fearful  distress  and  deficiency  on  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  whole  body.  The  wages  would  fall  by 
much  more  than  a  twentieth  part  of  what  they  were  orig- 
inally; and  thus  by  a  very  trifling  excess  in  the  number 
of  workmen  might  a  very  sore  and  widely  felt  depression 
be  brought  upon  the  comfort  and  sufficiency  of  the  lower 
orders. 

Now,  however  melancholy  this  contemplation  might 
be  in  the  first  instance,  yet,  by  dwelling  upon  it  a  little 
further,  we  shall  be  led  to  discover  certain  outlets  and 
reparations  that  might  cause  us  to  look  more  hopefully 
than  ever  on  the  future  destinies  of  our  species.  One 
thing  is  clear,  that  if  so  small  a  fractional  excess  in  the 
supply  of  labor  over  its  demand  is  enough  to  account  for 
a  very  great  deficiency  in  its  remuneration,  then,  after 
all,  it  may  lie  within  the  compass  of  a  small  fractional  re- 
lief to  bring  back  the  remuneration  to  its  proper  level,  and 
so  restore  the  desirable  equilibrium  between  the  wages 
of  a  workman  and  the  wants  of  his  family.  .  .  .  Could 
any  expedient  be  devised  by  which  the  number  of  laborers 
might  be  more  equalized  to  the  need  that  there  is  for 
them,  then,  instead  of  the  manufacturers  having  so  op- 
pressive control  over  the  workmen,  workmen  might  in 
some  degree  have  a  control  over  manufacturers.  We 
should  certainly  regard  it  as  a  far  more  healthful  state 
of  the  community  if  our  workmen,  instead  of  having  to 
seek  employment,  were  to  be  sought  after,  and  that  mas- 
ters had  to  go  in  quest  of  service,  rather  than  that  labor- 


ON    THE    WAGES    OF    LABOR  279 

ers  had  to  go  a-begging  for  it.  It  is  most  piteous  to  soo  a 
population  lying  prostrate  and  overwhelmed  under  the 
weight  of  their  own  numbers;  nor  are  we  aware  of  a 
finer  object,  both  for  the  wisdom  and  benevolence  of  pa- 
triotism, than  to  devise  a  method  by  which  the  lower  orders 
might  be  rescued  from  this  state  of  apparent  hopelessness. 
This  would  be  done  if  they  were  only  relieved  from  the 
pressure  of  that  competition  by  which  they  now  elbow 
out,  or  beat  down  each  other;  but  nothing  more  certain, 
than  that  not  till  the  number  of  workmen  bears  a  less 
proportion  to  the  need  which  there  is  for  them,  will  they 
be  able  to  treat  more  independently  with  their  employers, 
or  make  a  stand  against  all  such  terms  of  remuneration  as 
would  degrade  their  families  beneath  the  par  of  human 
comfort.  .  .  . 

We  cannot  enter  upon  this  argument  without  advert- 
ing, in  the  first  instance,  to  the  celebrated  theory  of  Mr. 
Malthus  on  the  subject  of  population.  And  one  thing  at 
least  is  manifest,  that  the  very  comprehension  of  his  views 
has  retarded  the  practical  application  of  them  to  any  ques- 
tion of  political  or  domestic  economy.  lie  writes  in  ref- 
erence to  the  species  and  the  world;  and  the  mind  of  his 
reader,  by  being  constantly  directed  to  the  population  of 
the  whole  globe,  and  to  the  relative  capacities  for  their 
subsistence,  that  are  diffused  over  the  surface  of  it,  can 
make  escape  from  his  conclusions  by  roaming  in  imagina- 
tion over  the  vast  regions  that  are  yet  unpeopled  and  the 
wilds  that,  however  rich  in  nature's  luxuriance,  have  been 
yet  untrodden  by  human  footsteps.  The  speculation  is 
admitted  by  many  to  be  true  who,  nevertheless,  would 


280  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

lie  upon  their  oars  till  the  last  acre  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
was  brought  to  its  highest  possible  cultivation.  The  reply 
to  an  alleged  excess  of  population  in  Britain,  is,  that  New 
Holland  offers  a  space  equal  to  twenty  Britains,  which 
lias  yet  been  unentered  upon,  and  that  till  this  space  be 
fully  occupied  there  is  only  one  expedient  which  we  have 
to  do  with,  even  that  of  emigration ;  that,  meanwhile,  the 
other  expedient,  or  a  preventive  check  upon  the  increase 
of  population,  is  wholly  uncalled  for,  that  it  may  lie  in 
reserve  for  that  futurity  which  is  still  at  an  indefinite  dis- 
tance from  us;  and  that  when  agriculture  has  done  its 
uttermost  upon  all  lands  it  will  be  fully  soon  enough  to 
think  of  keeping  the  human  species  within  that  maxi- 
mum of  human  subsistence  which  shall  then  have  been 
arrived  at. 

But,  after  all,  it  does  not  necessarily  follow  that  the 
pressure  of  the  world's  population  upon  the  world's  food 
will  remain  unfelt  till  the  latter  has  attained  its  maxi- 
mum. It  is  quite  enough  for  this  effect  that  the  tendency 
to  an  increase  of  population  is  greater  than  the  tendency 
to  an  increase  of  food.  .  .  .  It  is  quite  an  imaginary 
comfort  to  the  suffering  families  of  England  that  there 
are  tracts  in  New  Holland  capable  of  maintaining  a  ten- 
fold population  to  that  of  the  British  empire.  They  can- 
not transport  themselves  there  in  an  instant.  They  cannot 
raise  at  once  the  means,  either  for  their  own  emigration  or 
for  the  cultivation  of  this  unbroken  territory;  and  if  not 
at  once,  then  it  must  take  a  time  ere  this  consummation  is 
gained;  and  it  is  simple  enough,  for  the  upholding  of  a 
continuous  pressure,  that  during  that  time  there  is  a 


ON    THE    WAGES    OF    LABOR  281 

greater  force  of  progress  in  the  world's  population  than 
in  the  world's  food. 

It  were  sure  a  better  and  a  blander  community  at  home, 
if  instead  of  the  people  being  urged  on  to  the  very  margin 
of  the  country's  capabilities  to  maintain  them,  they  had 
rather  ease  and  amplitude  and  sufficiency  in  their  own 
native  land,  and  were  kept  a  good  way  within  the  point 
of  emigration. 

It  says  much  for  the  soundness  of  the  principles  of  Mr. 
Malthus,  that  they  always  become  more  evident  the  nar- 
rower the  field  is  on  which  they  are  exemplified ;  and,  con- 
sequently, the  nearer  the  inspection  is  to  which  they  are 
submitted.  When  he  affirms,  in  reference  to  the  whole 
species,  that  there  is  an  evil  in  premature  marriages,  for 
that  the  population  of  the  world  are  thereby  caused  to 
press  inconveniently  on  the  food  of  the  world,  one  finds 
a  refuge  from  his  conclusions  in  the  imagination  of  many 
fertile  but  yet  uncultivated  tracts  that  might  yield  the 
greatest  possible  scope  to  the  outlet  of  families  for  cen- 
turies to  come.  .  .  .  But  one  needs  not  his  philosophy 
to  feel  the  whole  force  of  his  principle  within  the  limits 
of  a  family,  where  the  premature  marriage  of  a  son,  who 
had  rashly  and  previously  to  any  right  establishment  of 
himself  in  the  world,  entered  upon  this  engagement, 
would  be  deplored  by  all  the  members  of  it  as  a  most 
calamitous  visitation;  and  that,  too,  both  on  account  of 
the  present  expense,  and  also  the  eventual  expense  of  a 
rising  progeny.  It  would  be  no  consolation  in  these  cir- 
cumstances to  be  told  of  the  millions  of  acres,  both  at 
home  and  abroad,  that  could  be  turned  to  the  sustenance 
of  millions  of  human  beings.  .  .  . 


282  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

In  like  manner  would  we  plead  for  an  exemption  from 
the  obloquy  that  attaches  to  this  theory  when,  instead  of 
speculating  and  providing  for  the  whole  world,  we  con- 
centrate our  views  on  a  single  parish  and  recall  our  scat- 
tered imagination  from  other  continents  and  other  climes 
to  that  which  lies  directly  and  familiarly  before  us,  among 
the  population  of  our  own  little  vicinity.  And  the  truth 
is  that  the  poor  laws  of  England  tend  to  isolate  each  of 
its  parishes  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  so  to  bring 
it  more  clearly  and  definitely  before  us  as  a  separate 
object  of  contemplation.  More  particularly  do  they 
throw  a  barrier  around  each,  which,  though  not  alto- 
gether insuperable,  has  yet  been  of  great  efficacy  in  hem- 
ming each  population  within  its  own  boundaries  and  clos- 
ing up  the  outlets  to  emigration.  It  is  in  this  way  that  the 
most  encouraging  offers  of  a  settlement  in  distant  lands 
are  often  resisted  by  the  English  peasantry.  They  are 
aware  of  a  certain  right  by  the  law  of  pauperism  upon 
their  own  native  soil,  and  this  they  are  not  willing  to 
forego.  They  feel  that  they  have  a  property  at  home 
which  they  would  relinquish  by  the  measure,  and  that 
reasoning,  therefore,  which  blinds  the  eye  of  the  reader 
against  the  truth  of  the  general  speculation  is  not  applica- 
ble in  present  circumstances  to  the  case  that  is  before  us. 
And  the  poor  laws  not  only  check  the  egress  of  the  re- 
dundant population  to  our  distant  colonies,  they  go  a  cer- 
tain way  to  impede  and  to  lessen  the  free  interchange  of 
people  from  one  parish  to  another,  both  by  begetting  in 
each  a  jealousy  of  new  settlers  and  augmenting  the  nat- 
ural preference  for  home  by  the  superadded  tie,  that  then 


ON    THE    WAGES   OF    LABOR  283 

they  have  their  proper  and  their  rightful  inheritance,  the 
benefit  of  which  can  be  got  far  more  directly  and  conveni- 
ently when  on  the  spot  than  when  they  remove  themselves 
to  a  distant  part  of  the  country.  But  even  when  so  re- 
moved they  still  hold  on  their  parish,  and,  like  non-resi- 
dent proprietors,  can  have  their  rent  transmitted  to  them, 
and  may,  in  fact,  be  as  burdensome  as  if  they  still  resided 
within  its  limits.  It  is  thus  that  the  vestry,  whence  the 
dispensations  of  pauperism  proceed,  may  be  regarded  as 
a  kind  of  adhesive  nucleus  around  which  the  people  of 
each  parish  accumulate  and  settle  and  so  present  us  with  as 
distinct  an  exemplification  of  the  theory  of  Mr.  Malthus  as 
if  each  were  in  itself  a  little  world,  the  affairs  and  difficul- 
ties of  which  may,  at  the  same  time,  be  considered  without 
his  theory  being  in  our  heads  at  all.  .  .  .  We  happen 
to  regard  Mr.  Malthus's  Theory  of  Population  as  incon- 
trovertible. Yet  we  do  not  link  with  it  our  reprobation  of 
English  pauperism  any  more  than  we  would  link  with  it 
our  reprobation  of  a  precipitate  marriage  in  a  destitute 
and  unprepared  family.  Let  his  theory  be  execrated  as  it 
may,  let  it  even  be  out-argued  by  its  adversaries,  this  will 
not  overthrow  any  of  those  maxims  of  domestic  prudence 
that  might  be  learned  at  the  mouth  of  every  ordinary 
housewife,  and  neither  will  it  overthrow  any  demonstra- 
tion of  those  evils  in  pauperism  which,  with  or  without 
a  philosophical  treatise,  are  quite  obvious  to  the  home- 
bred sagacity  of  country  squires  and  parish  overseers. 


CHAPTER  XVIH 

ON  THE  EFFECT  OF   A  POOR-KATE,   WHEN  APPLIED  IN 
AID  OF   DEFECTIVE   WAGES 

IN  every  parish  there  is  a  certain  quantity  of  work  to 
be  done,  and  a  certain  number  of  laborers  would  suffice 
for  the  doing  of  it.  Some  of  them  may  be  imported  from 
abroad,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  native  work- 
men may  have  gone  beyond  their  own  parochial  limits  in 
quest  of  employment.  Still,  with  or  without  these  move- 
ments, there  is  a  certain  number  in  the  parish  of  able  or 
available  laborers  who,  if  barely  adequate  to  the  labor 
that  is  required,  will  be  hired  upon  a  fair  remuneration, 
but  who,  if  they  exceed,  will  be  glad  to  accept  of  an  in- 
ferior remuneration  rather  than  want  employment  alto- 
gether. It  is  this  competition  which  brings  down  the 
wages  of  labor;  and,  on  the  principle  that  is  already  un- 
folded, a  very  small  excess  in  the  number  of  laborers  may 
give  rise  to  a  very  large  reduction  in  the  price  of  labor. 
It  is  in  vain  to  say  that  this  excess  will  naturally  discharge 
itself  upon  other  places.  So  it  would  in  a  natural  state  of 
things.  So  it  always  does  in  those  parishes  of  Scotland 
where  a  compulsory  provision  is  unknown.  But  in  Eng- 
land, where  the  practice  is  now  established  of  ministering 

from  the  poor-rate  not  merely  to  the  indigence  of  age 

284 


POOR-RATES  AND   DEFECTIVE  WAGES  285 

and  sickness  and  impotency,  but  to  the  indigence  of  able- 
bodied,  though  ill-paid,  industry,  this  excess  is  not  so  easily 
disposed  of.  There  is  a  principle  of  adherence  in  the  sys- 
tem which  detains  and  fastens  it  upon  the  parish  where 
once  this  excess  has  been  formed,  and  we  hold  it  very  in- 
structive to  look  at  the  various  expedients  by  which  it 
has  been  met,  and  at  the  uniform  failure  which  has  at- 
tended them. 

The  distress  of  inferior  wrages  is,  in  the  first  instance, 
felt  by  the  fathers  of  large  families;  and,  accordingly, 
they  are  the  first  who  have  been  benefited  by  the  exten- 
sion of  the  legal  charity  of  England  beyond  those  cases 
for  which  it  has  been  alleged  by  the  defenders  of  the 
system  as  established  by  the  act  of  Elizabeth  that  it  was 
strictly  and  originally  intended.  Certain  it  is  that  if  there 
really  was  any  such  limitation  designed  in  the  primary 
construction  of  the  statute  it  is  now  very  generally  dis- 
regarded, and  there  is  nought  more  common,  particularly 
in  the  southern  counties,  than  a  composition  of  \vages  and 
poor-rate,  both  of  which  are  made  to  enter  into  the  main- 
tenance of  an  able-bodied  laborer.  There  are  two  ques- 
tions generally  asked  of  the  applicant  for  parish  relief, 
and  which  may  be  regarded  as  furnishing  the  data  that 
fix  the  parish  allowance:  "What  do  you  earn?"  and 
"  What  is  the  number  of  the  family  that  you  have  to  main- 
tain? "  and  if  the  wages  be  held  inadequate  to  the  family, 
the  deficiency,  in  most  instances,  is  held  to  be  as  firm  a 
ground  of  application  as  the  utter  helplessness  of  impo- 
tency or  disease.  The  defect  in  wages  is  eked  out  by  a 
weekly  allowance  from  the  poor-rate;  and  he  who  in  other 


286  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

circumstances  would  have  been  left  as  an  independent 
workman  upon  his  own  resources,  becomes,  under  this  sys- 
tem, a  dependent  upon  legal  charity. 

This,  then,  is  the  first  application  of  poor-rate  to  wages 
which  claims  our  regard.  Before  that  single  and  able- 
bodied  men  can  have  the  benefit  of  this  poor-rate,  the 
parents  of  families  must  have  been  visited  by  its  allow- 
ances, and  that  just  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  their 
offspring.  It  is  a  premium  on  population  and  must  serve 
to  perpetuate  the  cause  of  that  mischief  which  it  is  de- 
signed to  alleviate.  There  is  a  general  feeling  all  over 
England  of  something  wrong  in  this  composition  of  wages 
with  the  parish  allowance;  and  along  with  it  a  sort  of 
anxiety  in  some  places  to  vindicate  their  management 
from  the  imputation  of  a  practice  that  is  felt  to  be  dis- 
creditable; so  that  when  the  question  is  put,  whether  it 
be  the  habit  of  the  place  to  supplement  defective  wages 
out  of  the  poor-rate,  a  very  frequent  reply  is  that  it  is 
never  done  by  them,  and  that  nothing  is  even  given  in 
consideration  of  a  low  wage,  but  only  in  consideration  of 
a  large  family.  This  way  of  shifting  it  from  one  ground 
to  another,  though  practically  it  makes  no  difference  as 
to  the  effect  of  the  regimen,  yet  is  very  instructive  as  to 
the  rationale  of  its  operation.  Though  Malthus  had  never 
written  there  could  not  be  a  more  complete  exposition 
than  is  given  by  the  answers  of  unlettered  and  unsophisti- 
cated men,  of  the  bearing  that  English  pauperism  has 
upon  population.  .  .  .  Here  we  have  parents  paid  out 
of  a  legal  and  compulsory  fund  because  of  the  largeness 
of  their  families,  and  we  may  safely  appeal  to  the  common- 


POOR-RATES  AND   DEFECTIVE   WAGES  28? 

sense  and  sagacity  of  the  most  unspeculative  minds, 
whether  this  must  not  add  to  the  number  of  marriages  in 
a  parish;  whether  it  does  not  slacken  all  those  prudential 
restraints  that  else  would  have  operated  as  a  check  upon 
their  frequency;  whether  the  hesitation  and  delay  that, 
in  a  natural  state  of  things,  are  associated  with  this  step 
are  not  in  a  great  measure  overborne  by  the  prospect  thus 
held  out,  of  a  defence  and  a  guarantee  against  the  worst 
consequences  of  many  a  rash  and  misguided  adventure. 
Must  not  marriages  come  earlier  and  therefore  be  more 
productive  under  such  a  system  than  they  otherwise  would 
be?  Or,  in  other  words,  is  not  this  remedy  for  the  low 
wages,  induced  by  an  excess  of  people,  the  likeliest  instru- 
ment that  could  be  devised,  not  only  for  keeping  up  the 
excess,  but  for  causing  it  to  press  still  more  on  the  already 
urged  and  overburdened  resources  of  this  small  parochial 
community? 

Sometimes  the  formal  parish  allowance  begins  im- 
mediately with  the  event  of  matrimony,  insomuch  that 
single  men,  on  being  refused  the  parochial  aid  for  eking 
out  their  miserable  wages,  have  threatened  to  marry,  have 
put  their  threat  into  execution  and  been  instantly  pre- 
ferred in  consequence  to  a  place  on  the  vestry  roll  among 
those  who  have  qualified  in  like  manner.  When  marriage 
is  thus  made  a  qualification  for  an  allowance  from  the 
poor-rate,  one  does  not  see  how  the  poor-rate  can  escape  the 
charge  of  being  a  bounty  upon  marriage.  And,  accord- 
ingly, this  evil  is  so  much  felt  and  deprecated  that  in  cer- 
tain places  they  have  resolved  to  abolish  the  distinction 
between  the  allowances  to  single  and  married  men  and 


288  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

actually  pay  all  alike,  though  at  a  great  additional  expense 
in  the  meantime ;  and  this  to  arrest  and  lighten,  if  possi- 
ble, that  coming  tide  of  population  wherewith  they  fear 
to  be  overwhelmed. 

But  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  by  this  compromise  be- 
tween the  payers  of  charity  and  the  payers  of  labor  all 
the  able-bodied  of  a  parish  are  admitted  to  employment. 
There  is  a  limit  to  the  work  of  a  parish,  but  while  this 
economy  lasts  there  can  be  no  limit  to  the  number  of  the 
workmen,  who,  of  course,  after  various  expediencies  and 
ingenuities  have  been  practised  for  the  purpose  of  inter- 
cepting them  with  something  to  do,  at  length  overflow 
into  a  state  of  total  idleness.  One  of  these  expedients  is 
to  send  round  the  men  who  have  not  fallen  into  employ- 
ment in  the  regular  and  customary  way  among  the  farmers 
with  the  lure  of  getting  their  work  on  very  cheap  terms, 
as  the  parish  will  pay  the  difference  between  their  low 
wages  and  the  sum  that  might  be  deemed  necessary  for 
their  entire  maintenance.  It  is  no  doubt  an  advantage  to 
the  farmer  to  have  his  work  done  cheaply,  but  where  is 
the  advantage  if  he  have  no  work  for  them  to  do  ?  Every 
one  department  may  be  already  filled  and  supersaturated 
with  labor.  For  the  accommodation  of  idle  hands  thresh- 
ing machines  may  be  put  down,  and  a  ruder  and  clumsier 
agriculture  may  have  been  perpetuated,  and  all  ingenious 
devices  by  which  the  human  mind  could  contrive  to 
abridge  labor  may  have  been  prescribed,  and  just  that 
human  muscles  may  be  kept  in  as  full  requisition  as  pos- 
sible. Yet  all  is  ineffectual;  and  many  a  weary  circuit 
often  have  these  roundsmen  to  make,  knocking  at  every 


POOR-EATES  AND  DEFECTIVE  WAGES  289 

door  for  admittance,  yet  everywhere  refused,  till  at  length, 
after  all  their  attempts  are  exhausted,  they  devolve  the 
whole  burden  of  their  existence  on  the  parish,  and  gather 
into  a  band  of  supernumeraries. 

And  exceedingly  various  have  been  the  devices  for  their 
employment.  Sometimes  they  have  been  congregated  into 
workhouses  where  they  are  provided  with  any  employ- 
ment that  can  be  got  for  them  by  the  parish  overseers.  At 
other  times  they  have  been  farmed  out  to  a  speculator, 
who  has  turned  the  workhouse  into  a  factory,  and  pos- 
sesses himself  of  their  services  at  a  rate  exceedingly  be- 
neath the  market  price  of  labor.  At  other  times  they 
may  be  seen  in  a  kind  of  disorderly  band,  laboring  either 
upon  parish  roads  or  in  sand  and  gravel  pits.  The  value 
of  what  they  render  in  this  way  for  their  subsistence  is 
in  a  general  way  very  insignificant.  The  truth  is  that  an 
increasing  population  can  no  more  be  supplied  indefinite- 
ly with  profitable  work  than  they  can  be  supplied  indefi- 
nitely with  money  or  with  food.  It  is  more  for  a  moral 
effect  than  for  the  worth  of  the  labor  that  these  various 
modes  of  industry  are  laid  upon  them.  Better  give  them 
something  to  do  than  that  they  should  be  wholly  idle. 
Though  even  this  object  is  not  always  accomplished,  and 
in  many  of  the  agricultural  parishes  they  may  be  seen 
lounging  out  a  kind  of  lazzaroni  life,  upon  a  weekly  pit- 
tance from  the  vestry,  in  the  fields  or  on  the  highway. 

There  is  one  very  sore  evil  in  this  system.  It  has  dis- 
tempered altogether  the  relationship  between  a  master 
and  his  servants.  The  latter  feel  less  obligation  to  the  for- 
mer for  being  taken  into  his  employment,  seeing  that  they 
19 


290  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

have  a  refuge  in  poor-rates  from  the  destitution  which 
in  other  countries  attaches  to  a  state  of  idleness.  They 
are  not  so  careful  in  seeking  work  for  themselves,  as  the 
law  has  rendered  them  in  some  measure  independent  of 
it.  ...  They  care  little  though  they  should  be  dis- 
missed, and  this  has  often  the  effect  of  making  them  idle 
and  insolent.  .  .  . 

After  all,  the  employment  which  is  given  for  the  pur- 
pose of  mitigating  the  rate  is  little  better  than  idleness  in 
disguise.  In  the  case  of  roundsmen  the  whole  remunera- 
tion is  made  up  partly  of  wages  from  the  master  and  partly 
of  an  allowance  from  the  parish;  and  there  is  nothing 
more  common  than  when  they  have  wrought  to  a  certain 
amount,  or  for  so  many  hours  in  the  day,  to  take  the  rest 
of  the  day  very  much  to  themselves;  and  though  still 
under  the  semblance  of  doing  something  at  an  allotted 
task,  literally  to  do  nothing.  It  is  a  familiar  saying 
amongst  them  that  "  Our  master  has  now  got  all  that  time 
in  the  day  from  us  which  he  has  paid  for;  what  the 
parish  pays  for  is  our  own."  And  this  proportion,  even 
though  fair  and  accurately  struck,  leaves  a  sad  vacancy 
in  their  hands,  which  is  often  filled  up  with  positive  mis- 
chief. At  all  events  it  wholly  corrupts  and  relaxes  them 
as  laborers.  .  .  . 

It  is  further  a  most  grievous  necessity  in  their  state 
that  they  should  be  forced  to  commence  their  life  as  pau- 
pers; that  they  should  be  familiarized  from  a  tender  age 
to  the  allowances  of  the  parish  vestry;  that  all  generous 
and  aspiring  independence  should  be  smothered  when  in 
embryo  within  them,  and  a  new  race  should  arise  so  fos- 


POOR-KATES  AND  DEFECTIVE  WAGES  291 

tered  and  so  prepared  as  to  outstrip  their  predecessors  in 
the  rapacity  and  the  meanness  and  all  the  sordid  or  de- 
grading habits  of  pauperism. 

It  comes  to  the  same  result  whether  they  are  sent  as 
roundsmen  or  are  wholly  paid  and  employed  by  the  parish 
as  supernumeraries.  In  the  latter  case  they  may  give 
their  labor  either  in  a  workhouse  or  out  of  doors;  but 
both  from  the  difficulty  of  supplying  work,  and  from  the 
lax  superintendence  into  which  the  whole  system  is  so 
apt  to  degenerate,  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  vast  nursery 
both  of  idleness  and  vice  all  over  England.  We  do  not 
hesitate  to  charge  on  the  pauperism  of  England  the  vast 
majority  of  its  crimes,  detaining  by  its  promises  within 
the  borders  of  every  parish  a  greater  number  of  families 
than  it  can  well  and  comfortably  provide  for,  luring,  as  it 
were,  more  into  existence  than  it  can  meet  with  right  and 
requisite  supplies,  and  after  conducting  them  onward 
toward  manhood  leaving  them  in  a  state  of  unsated  ap- 
petency, and  withal  in  leisure  for  the  exercise  of  their 
ingenuities  by  which  to  devise  its  gratification.  We  can- 
not conceive  of  a  state  of  society  more  fermentative  of 
crime,  from  the  thousand  unnoticed  and  unnoticeable  pil- 
ferments  that  we  fear  are  in  daily  and  very  extended 
operation  among  the  laboring  classes,  to  the  higher  feats 
of  villany,  the  midnight  enterprise,  the  rapine,  sealed, 
if  necessary,  with  blood,  the  house  assault,  the  highway 
depredation. 

Simply  if  labor  were  better  paid  it  would  not  be  so. 

[Repeating  the  argument  that  wages  are  depressed  be- 
cause there  is  an  excess  of  population  of  laboring  men 


292  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

offering  their  service  in  competition  with  each  other,  he 
goes  on:] 

In  this  view  of  the  matter  we  may  see  at  once  the 
cruelty  of  a  poor-rate;  how,  in  the  first  instance,  by  the 
encouragement  which  it  gives  to  precipitate  marriage  it 
multiplies  the  people  beyond  the  rate  at  which  they  would 
otherwise  have  multiplied;  how,  in  the  second  instance, 
by  holding  out  to  all  of  them  a  right  and  property  in  their 
native  parish  it  detains  the  people  and  closes  up,  at  it  were, 
those  outlets  of  emigration  by  which  relief  might  have 
been  obtained  from  the  competition  of  a  most  hurtful  ex- 
cess; how,  in  the  third  instance,  it  provides  for  this  sur- 
plus of  laborers,  but  on  terms  which  lie  at  the  arbitration 
of  the  upper  classes  in  society;  how,  in  the  fourth  in- 
stance, it  gives  to  the  masters  a  mighty  advantage  over 
their  regular  laborers  and  enables  them  to  bring  the  gen- 
eral wages  of  husbandry  indefinitely  near  to  the  parish 
allowance  for  roundsmen  and  supernumeraries;  thus,  in 
fact,  under  the  guise  of  kindness  to  the  stragglers  of  the 
community  operating  a  most  injurious  reduction  on  the 
state  and  comfort  of  the  whole  body,  grinding  down  the 
lower  orders  to  the  very  point  of  starvation,  and  with  a 
malignity  not  the  less  provoking  that  it  works  by  a  system 
on  the  face  of  which  there  are  constantly  playing  the 
smiles  of  mercy,  and  in  the  support  of  which  the  sweetest 
poesy  hath  been  heard  to  pour  forth  her  dulcet  strains 
into  the  ear  of  weeping  sentimentalism. 

"We  do  not  need  anything  half  so  ponderous  as  the 
theory  of  population  for  the  whole  species  to  be  assured 


POOR-RATES  AND  DEFECTIVE  WAGES  293 

that  at  this  moment  there  are  more  people  than  can  be 
maintained  with  comfort  in  our  agricultural  parishes. 
The  thing  is  plainly  felt  all  over  England,  and  this  feel- 
ing cannot  be  overborne  by  any  argument  either  for  or 
against  a  theory.  .  .  .  And,  along  with  the  palpable 
exhibition  of  an  over-peopled  parish,  there  is  the  equally 
palpable  habit,  both  of  most  abandoned  licentiousness  and 
most  improvident  marriages.  The  number  of  illegitimate 
children  alone  superinduces  such  an  excess  upon  the  other 
population  as  is  quite  adequate  to  a  great  and  general  re- 
duction in  the  price  of  labor.  .  .  . 

It  were  a  very  crude  legislation  for  giving  effect  to  the 
speculation  of  Mr.  Malthus  to  define  the  earliest  age  at 
which  people  should  marry.  ...  It  were  striving  to 
bring  about  a  right  result  by  a  compensation  of  errors. 
.  .  .  The  law  of  pauperism  has  given  undue  encourage- 
ment to  matrimony;  and  it  has  been  proposed  by  a  law  of 
matrimony  to  repress  the  encouragement.  It  is  the  ex- 
cess of  legislation  which  has  done  the  mischief,  and  the 
best  method  of  doing  it  away  is  simply  to  lop  off  the 
excess,  and  not  to  counteract  one  foolish  law  by  an- 
other. .  .  . 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  abolition  of  the  law  of 
pauperism  would  bring  on  a  somewhat  later  average  of 
matrimony  among  the  people.  Should  this  abolition  ever 
take  place,  and  the  consequent  period  of  marriage  become 
the  subject  of  political  arithmetic,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  its  tables  will  exhibit  a  more  advanced  age,  on  the 
whole,  at  which  females  marry  under  the  new  system 
than  under  the  present  one.  .  .  .  There  would  even 


294  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

without  the  law  of  pauperism  be  a  premature  entry  upon 
this  alliance,  but  not  so  premature  on  the  whole.  .  .  . 
Many  still  would  be  the  outbreakings  of  irregularity  and 
folly,  but  if  at  all  diminished  there  would  necessarily 
be  a  certain  shift  for  the  better  in  the  average  of  matri- 
mony, and  it  were  in  the  face  of  all  arithmetic  .  .  . 
to  deny  that  this  must  tell  on  the  births  of  a  parish  and 
its  population.  We  do  not  say  that  profligacy  would  be 
exterminated  with  the  law  of  pauperism,  but  it  would  be 
checked;  and,  we  venture  to  affirm,  that  were  the  sup- 
plies of  pauperism  withdrawn  from  all  future  illegiti- 
mates there  would  be  an  instantaneous  diminution  of  their 
number.  In  all  these  ways  the  market  for  labor  would 
be  less  crowded  than  it  is  now,  and  laborers  would  stand  on 
a  higher  vantage-ground  in  the  negotiations  between  them 
and  their  employers.  There  would  be  some  fewer  work- 
men than  before,  and  this  is  enough  to  cause  much  higher 
wages.  This  is  a  most  important  compensation  that  awaits 
the  lower  classes  of  England,  after  that  the  dispensations 
of  pauperism  have  been  withdrawn  from  them. 

[Here  is  repeated  at  some  length  the  statement  of  the 
method  for  gradual  abolition  of  pauperism  and  the  sub- 
stitution of  the  system  of  voluntary  parish  charity.] 

Emigration  to  our  colonies  is  worthy  of  the  utmost  sup- 
port from  Government,  if  connected  with  a  process  for 
the  abolition  of  pauperism.  But  should  the  system  of 
pauperism  continue,  it  will  operate  no  sensible  relief  in 
England.  It  has  been  likened  to  a  safety-valve,  but  it  is 
a  valve,  the  very  lifting  and  opening  of  which  implies  the 


POOR-RATES   AND   DEFECTIVE   WAGES  295 

elasticity  within  of  a  state  of  compression  and  violence; 
and  up  to  this  state  it  will  remain,  notwithstanding  the 
successive  escapes  of  a  redundant  population.  The  crea- 
tive process  will  always  maintain  a  balance  with  the  re- 
lieving process;  and  a  people  must  be  in  distress  when 
the  difficulties  of  home  are  so  nearly  in  equilibrium  with 
its  charms  as  to  place  them  on  the  eve  of  desire  and  de- 
liberation to  renounce  it  forever.  And  besides,  the  poor 
laws  act  in  an  opposite  direction  to  the  offers  and  the  en- 
couragements of  emigration;  though,  if  connected  with 
any  plan  for  the  abolition  of  them,  we  cannot  conceive  a 
better  way,  both  of  smoothing  the  transition  and  of  keep- 
ing the  country  in  a  clear  and  healthful  state  after  the 
transition  has  been  effected.  But  it  is  to  the  reaction  at 
home  that  we  look  for  our  best  securities  against  any 
shock  or  disaster  that  might  be  apprehended  to  our  fam- 
ilies from  the  overthrow  of  pauperism.  When  charity  is 
altogether  detached  from  the  remuneration  of  labor,  this 
of  itself  will  keep  off  a  very  wide  and  wasting  contamina- 
tion from  the  spirit  of  our  peasantry,  and  they  will  again 
recover  the  honest  pride  of  independence.  Still  more 
would  this  feeling  grow  in  strength  and  sensibility  were 
they  trained  to  the  habit  of  small  but  constant  accumula- 
tion. It  is  at  this  crisis  that  a  parish  savings-bank  might 
achieve  a  wondrous  transformation  on  the  state  of  the 
people,  by  begetting  a  sense  of  property  among  laborers. 
.  .  .  Once  that  the  turning-point  has  been  made  from 
being  a  pauper  to  being  a  possessor,  a  new  ambition  is 
felt,  and  a  new  object  comes  to  be  intensely  prosecuted. 
This  is  a  better  expedient  for  postponing  the  date  of 


296  CHJI1ST1AN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

marriage  than  any  act  of  Parliament.  The  days  were 
in  Scotland,  when  it  was  customary,  during  the  virtuous 
attachment  of  years,  for  the  parties  to  fill  up  the  interval 
with  those  frugalities  and  labors  by  which  they  made 
a  provision  for  their  future  household,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  a  savings-bank  is  fitted  to  inspire  with  a 
similar  purpose  those  who  repair  to  it.  ... 

[Here  are  added  a  few  technical  suggestions  in  respect 
to  ways  of  avoiding  evils  arising  out  of  the  conflict  of 
settlement  laws  as  applied  to  various  districts.  It  is  rec- 
ommended, in  justice  to  the  trial  parishes,  that  if  laborers 
having  settlement  elsewhere  invade  these  favored  districts 
they  lose  their  legal  claim  to  relief.  But  the  author 
thinks  there  would  be  comparatively  little  abuse,  since  the 
trial  parishes  would  be  averse  to  giving  employment  to 
strangers  so  long  as  any  at  home  asked  work.] 


CHAPTER  XIX 

ON   SAVINGS-BANKS 

WITHOUT  the  co-operation  of  their  own  virtuous  en- 
deavors there  seems  no  possible  way  of  doing  good  to  the 
laboring  classes,  or  of  helping  them  upward  from  a  lower 
to  a  more  secure  and  elevated  place  in  the  commonwealth. 
But  we  can  see  a  very  patent  way  to  it  in  such  habits  and 
resources  as,  generally  speaking,  are  within  their  reach. 
It  is  for  them,  and  for  them  only,  to  regulate  the  supply 
of  laborers.  .  .  .  The  frugality  of  a  workman  might 
length,  through  a  means  of  a  savings-bank,  land  him  in  a 
small  capital,  and  there  is  one  effect  of  a  capital  in  the 
hands  of  the  laboring  classes  which  must  be  quite  obvious. 
It  were  a  barrier  between  them  and  that  urgent  immediate 
necessity  which  gives  such  advantage  to  their  employers 
in  the  question  of  wages.  A  man  on  the  brink  of  starva- 
tion has  no  command  in  this  negotiation.  He  will  gladly 
accept  of  such  terms  as  are  offered  rather  than  perish  of 
hunger;  and  it  is  thus,  by  their  improvidence  and  their 
reckless  expenditure  in  prosperous  times,  that  on  the  evil 
day  they  lie  so  much  at  the  mercy  and  dictation  of  their 
superiors.  The  possession  of  a  capital,  and  that  not  a  very 
great  one,  by  each  individual  laborer,  or  rather  by  each 

of  a  considerable  number  of  laborers,  would  reverse  the 

297 


298  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

character  of  the  negotiation  entirely.  They  could  stand 
out  against  miserable  wages.  They  could  afford  to  be 
idle;  and,  while  so,  the  stock  of  the  commodity  which 
they  .work,  and  wherewith  the  market  is  for  the  present 
glutted,  would  soon  melt  away,  and  the  price  of  their  labor 
be  speedily  restored  to  its  fair  and  comfortable  level. 
.  .  .  The  whole  platform  of  humble  life  would  take 
a  higher  level  than  at  present;  and  we  repeat  that,  to 
every  man  who  felt  aright,  it  were  a  satisfaction  and  a 
triumph  then  to  recognize  a  hale  and  well-conditioned 
peasantry. 

We  are  aware  of  a  jealousy  here,  and  how  much  it  is 
that  capitalists  have  suffered  by  unlooked-for  conspiracies 
on  the  part  of  the  workmen.  We  are  also  aware  of  the 
sums  that  have  been  subscribed  by  the  latter  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  maintaining  all  the  members  of  the  con- 
spiracy in  idleness,  and  so  of  holding  out  till  masters 
should  surrender  to  their  terms.  It  is  on  these  considera- 
tions that  an  apprehension  has  been  felt,  in  certain  quar- 
ters, lest  savings-banks  should  arm  the  mechanics  and 
workmen  of  our  land  with  a  dangerous  power,  and  place 
at  the  mercy  of  their  caprice  the  interest  of  all  the  other 
orders  in  society.  This,  at  least,  is  a  concession  of  the  ef- 
ficacy of  these  institutions  for  all  the  purposes  on  account 
of  which  we  would  argue  in  their  favor,  and  they  who 
fear  lest  provident  banks  should  make  the  lower  orders 
too  rich,  must  at  all  events  allow,  that  with  care  and  con- 
duct on  their  part,  there  is  a  capability  amongst  them  for 
becoming  rich  enough  to  be  wholly  independent  of  the 
supplies  of  pauperism.  While  we  have  no  doubt  that  the 


ON    SAVINGS-BANKS  299 

power  of  becoming  rich  enough  is  in  their  own  hands,  we 
cannot  sympathize  with  the  feelings  of  those  who  fear 
lest  they  should  be  too  rich.  We  should  like  to  see  them 
invested  with  a  certain  power  of  dictation  as  to  their  own 
wages.  We  should  like  to  see  them  taking  full  advantage 
of  all  that  they  have  fairly  earned  in  the  negotiation  with 
their  employers.  We  should  like  to  see  a  great  stable 
independent  property  in  the  hands  of  the  laboring  classes, 
and  their  interest  elevated  to  one  of  the  high  co-ordinate 
interests  of  the  state.  It  were  well,  we  think,  if,  by  dint 
of  education  and  virtue,  they  at  length  secured  a  more 
generous  remuneration  for  labor  so  as  that  wages  should 
bear  a  much  higher  proportion  than  they  do  now  to  the 
rent  of  land  and  the  profit  of  stock,  which  form  the  other 
two  ingredients  in  the  value  of  a  commodity.  In  this 
competition  between  capitalists  and  workmen  we  profess 
ourselves  to  be  on  the  side  of  the  latter,  and  would  re- 
joice in  every  advantage  which  their  own  industry  and 
their  own  sobriety  had  won  for  them.  Rather  than  that, 
at  the  basis  of  society,  we  should  have  a  heartless,  profli- 
gate, and  misthriven  crew,  on  the  brink  of  starvation,  and 
crouching  under  all  the  humiliations  of  pauperism,  we 
should  vastly  prefer  an  erect  and  sturdy  and  withal  well- 
paid  and  well-principled  peasantry,  even  though  they 
should  be  occasionally  able  to  strike  their  tools  and  to  in- 
commode their  superiors  by  bringing  industry  to  a  stand. 
We  have  no  doubt  at  the  same  time  that  the  fear  is  an  al- 
together extravagant  one ;  that  the  two  classes  would  soon 
come  to  a  right  adjustment,  and  that  in  particular  the  em- 
ployers of  labor  would  find  it  a  far  more  comfortable 


300  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

management  when  they  had  to  do  with  a  set  of  prosperous 
and  respectable  workmen,  than  when  they  have  to  do  with 
the  fiery  and  unreasonable  spirits  that  so  abound  among 
a  dissipated,  ill-taught,  and  ill-conditioned  population.  In 
the  strength  of  the  principle  of  population,  nature  has 
provided  a  sufficient  security  against  the  prudential  re- 
straint upon  marriages  being  carried  too  far,  and  we  may, 
therefore,  always  be  sure  of  an  adequate  supply  of  labor- 
ers for  all  the  essential  or  important  business  of  the  land. 
But,  through  the  law  of  pauperism,  the  restraint  is  not 
carried  far  enough,  and  now  we  are  oppressed,  in  conse- 
quence, by  a  redundancy  of  numbers.  By  abolishing  this 
law  we  simply  leave  the  adjustment  of  the  balance  to  nat- 
ure. Legislators  vacillate  and  are  uncertain  about  the 
alternative  of  the  people  being  either  too  rich  or  too 
poor.  But  nature,  if  unmeddled  with  by  their  inter- 
ference, will  so  manage  between  the  animal  instincts  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  urgencies  of  self-preservation,  or 
the  higher  principles  of  the  mind,  upon  the  other,  as 
that  they  shall  neither  be  richer  nor  poorer  than  they 
ought  to  be. 

This  prejudice,  however,  against  savings-banks,  and 
this  alarm  for  the  independence  of  the  lower  orders,  are 
very  much  confined  to  capitalists  of  narrow  views  and  nar- 
row circumstances.  There  is  a  delightful  experience 
upon  this  subject  that  is  multiplying  and  becoming  more 
manifest  every  day,  and  which  goes  to  prove  how  much 
the  interest  of  the  employer  and  that  of  the  workman  is 
at  one.  It  is,  that  the  expense  of  a  well-paid  laborer  is 
in  general  more  than  made  up  by  the  superior  worth  and 


ON    SAVINGS-BANKS  3U1 

quality  of  his  service.  The  farmer,  in  those  parishes 
where  there  is  a  composition  of  poor-rate  with  wages,  does 
not  find  his  account  in  that  system.  The  labor  is  cheaper, 
but  far  less  valuable  in  proportion;  the  work  that  is 
underpaid  being  done  in  a  way  so  much  more  slovenly  as 
to  annihilate  any  advantage  that  might  otherwise  have 
accrued  to  the  master.  It  is  an  advantage  grasped  at  by 
men  of  limited  means,  and  who  find  a  saving  in  their 
immediate  outlay  to  be  of  some  consequence  to  them.  But 
in  the  large  and  liberal  scale,  either  of  a  great  manufac- 
tory, or  of  any  agricultural  operation  in  which  a  sufficient 
capital  is  embarked,  it  is  found  that,  with  well-paid  and 
well-principled  workmen,  the  prosperity,  both  of  masters 
and  servants,  is  most  effectually  consulted.  .  .  . 

We  are  quite  aware  that  it  is  not  by  the  operation  of  but 
a  few  savings-banks,  and  a  consequent  capital  in  the  hands 
of  fractionally  a  very  small  number  of  our  people,  that  a 
higher  rate  of  wages  will  become  general  in  the  country. 
To  work  this  effect  there  must  be  a  corresponding  general- 
ity in  the  cause.  There  will  not  be  this  general  elevation 
in  the  status  of  laborers  till  there  be  a  general  habit  of  ac- 
cumulation amongst  them;  and  however  much  the  in- 
dividuals who  do  accumulate  may  benefit  themselves,  they 
must  bear  a  certain  proportion  to  the  whole  mass  of  the 
community  ere  they  can  work  a  sensible  advancement 
upon  the  whole  in  the  circumstances  of  the  lower  orders. 
Suppose  a  district  of  the  land  where  the  peasantry  had  by 
economy  and  good  management  attained  a  measure  of  in- 
dependence, yet,  if  surrounded  by  other  over-peopled  dis- 
tricts, teeming  with  reckless  and  improvident  families, 


302  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

this  were  enough  to  keep  down  the  remuneration  of  labor, 
even  in  that  place  where  laborers  had  universally  become 
little  capitalists.  It  is  thus  that  the  neighborhood  of  Ire- 
land will  retard  the  progress  of  the  lower  orders  in  Britain 
toward  a  permanently  higher  state  of  comfort  and  suf- 
ficiency than  they  now  enjoy.  And  the  only  way  of  neu- 
tralizing the  competition  from  that  quarter  is  just  by 
carrying  to  them,  too,  the  beneficent  influences  of  educa- 
tion and  training  the  people  to  that  style  and  habit  of  en- 
joyment which  will  at  length  bring  later  marriages  and  a 
less  oppressive  weight  of  population  along  with  it.  We 
are  abundantly  sensible  that  the  enlargement  which  we 
now  contemplate  as  awaiting  our  operative  classes  must 
be  the  slow  result  of  a  moral  improvement  among  them- 
selves, which  we  fear  will  come  on  very  gradually.  But 
certain  it  is  that,  tardy  as  this  way  may  be  of  a  people's 
amelioration,  it  is  the  only  way;  and,  at  all  events,  there 
is  nothing  in  the  tumult  and  stir  of  those  popular  com- 
binations which  have  so  recently  arisen  in  all  parts  of  the 
land,  that  in  the  least  degree  is  fitted  to  hasten  it. 

The  whole  philosophy  of  a  subject  may  be  exemplified 
within  a  narrow  space.  In  its  practical  effects,  pauperism 
is  coextensive  with  our  empire.  In  its  principles,  and  in 
the  whole  rationale  of  its  operation,  it  may  be  effectually 
studied  even  on  the  limited  field  of  a  small  parochial 
community.  .  .  .  It  is  on  this  account  that  we  prize  so 
much  the  following  little  narrative  by  the  overseer  of 
Long  Burton,  in  Dorsetshire,  a  parish  with  a  population 
of  only  three  hundred  and  twenty-seven,  and  therefore 
peculiarly  adapted  for  the  distinct  exhibition  of  any  in- 


ON    SAVINGS-BANKS  303 

fluence  which  its  parochial  economy  might  have  on  the 
state  of  its  inhabitants. 

The  overseer  had  three  able-bodied  men  out  of  em- 
ployment, and  whom  it  fell  of  him  to  dispose  of.  The 
farmers  all  saturated  with  workmen  could  not  take  them 
in,  and  rather  than  send  them  to  work  upon  the  roads,  he 
applied  to  a  master-mason  in  the  neighborhood,  who  en- 
gaged to  take  their  services  at  the  low  rate  of  six  shillings 
in  the  week,  the  parish  to  make  up  the  deficiency  to  the 
three  men,  so  as  that  they  should,  on  the  whole,  have 
fifteen  pence  a  week  for  each  member  of  their  families. 
The  mason  had  previously  in  his  employment  from  seven 
to  ten  men,  at  the  weekly  wage  of  eight  or  nine  shillings 
each.  But  no  sooner  did  he  take  in  these  three  super- 
numeraries from  the  parish  at  six  shillings  than  he  began 
to  treat  anew  with  his  old  workmen,  and  threatened  to 
discharge  them  if  they  would  not  consent  to  a  lower  wage. 
This  of  course  would  have  thrown  them  all  upon  the  par- 
ish, for  the  difference  between  their  reduced  and  their 
present  wages,  upon  perceiving  which,  the  overseer  in- 
stantly drew  back  his  three  men  from  the  mason,  and  at 
length  contrived  to  dispose  of  them  otherwise.  Upon 
this  the  wages  of  the  journeymen  masons  reverted  to  what 
they  were  before. 

Now  this  exemplifies  the  state  of  many  agricultural 
parishes  in  England.  There  is  a  reserve  of  supernumer- 
aries constantly  on  the  eve  of  pouring  forth  over  all  the 
departments  of  regular  labor,  and  on  the  instant  of  their 
doing  so,  forcing  one  and  all  of  the  regular  workmen 
within  the  margin  of  pauperism.  .  .  . 


304  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

An  overstocked  market  is  either  prevented  or  more 
speedily  relieved  simply  by  so  many  of  the  workmen 
ceasing  to  work,  or  by  a  great  many  working  moderately. 
It  is  thus  that  a  savings-bank  is  the  happiest  of  all  ex- 
pedients for  filling  up  the  gaps  and  equalizing  the  de- 
ficiencies and  shortening  those  dreary  intervals  of  ill- 
paid  work,  which  now  occur  so  frequently  to  the  great 
degradation  and  distress  of  every  manufacturing  popu- 
lation. We  have  always  been  of  opinion  that  the 
main  use  of  a  savings-bank  was  not  to  elevate  laborers 
into  the  class  of  capitalists,  but  to  equalize  and  improve 
their  condition  as  laborers.  We  should  like  them  to 
have  each  a  small  capital,  not  wherewith  to  become 
manufacturers,  but  wherewith  to  control  manufacturers. 
.  .  .  The  overplus  of  manufactured  goods,  which  is 
the  cause  of  miserable  wages,  would  soon  clear  away 
under  that  restriction  of  work  which  would  naturally 
follow  on  the  part  of  men  who  did  not  choose,  because 
they  did  not  need,  to  work  for  miserable  wages.  What 
is  now  a  protracted  season  of  suffering  and  discontent 
to  the  lower  orders,  would,  in  these  circumstances,  be- 
come to  them  a  short  but  brilliant  career  of  holiday 
enjoyment.  The  report  of  a  heavy  downfall  of  wages, 
instead  of  sounding  like  a  knell  of  despair  in  their  ears, 
would  be  their  signal  for  rising  up  to  play.  We  have 
heard  that  there  does  not  exist  in  our  empire  a  more 
intellectual  and  accomplished  order  of  workmen  than 
the  weavers  of  Paisley.  It  was  their  habit,  we  under- 
stand, to  abandon  their  looms  throughout  the  half  or 
nearly  the  whole  of  each  Saturday,  and  to  spend  this 


ON    SAVINGS-BANKS  305 

time  in  gardening,  or  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  country  walk. 
It  is  true  that  such  time  might  sometimes  be  viciously 
spent,  but  still  we  should  rejoice  in  such  a  degree  of  suf- 
ficiency among  our  operatives  as  that  they  could  afford  a 
lawful  day  of  every  week  for  their  amusement,  and  still 
more,  that  they  could  afford  whole  months  of  relaxed  and 
diminished  industry,  when  industry  was  under-paid. 
.  .  .  The  very  habits  which  helped  them  to  accumulate 
in  the  season  of  well-paid  work  would  form  the  best  guar- 
antee against  the  vicious  and  immoral  abuse  of  this  ac- 
cumulation in  the  season  either  of  entire  or  comparative 
inactivity.  We  would  expect  an  increase  of  reading,  and 
the  growth  of  literary  cultivation,  and  the  steady  advance- 
ment of  virtuous  and  religious  habits,  and,  altogether,  a 
greater  weight  of  character  and  influence  among  the  labor- 
ing classes  as  the  permanent  results  of  such  a  system. 
Instead  of  being  the  victims  of  every  adverse  movement 
in  trade,  they  would  become  its  most  effective  regulators. 

20 


CHAPTEE  XX 

ON  THE  COMBINATIONS  OF  WORKMEN  FOR  THE  PUR- 
POSE OF  RAISING  WAGES 

WE  fear  that  the  cause  of  Savings-Banks  may  have  sus- 
tained a  temporary  discredit  from  the  recent  conduct  of 
workmen  all  over  the  country.  The  apprehension  is,  that, 
by  a  large  united  capital  amongst  them,  they  might  get 
the  upper  hand  of  their  employers  altogether;  that,  in 
possession  of  means  which  could  enable  them  to  be  idle, 
they  may  exercise  a  power  most  capriciously  and  most  in- 
conveniently for  the  other  classes  of  society;  that  they 
may  lay  manufacturers  under  bondage  by  their  impreg- 
nable combinations ;  and,  striking  work  at  the  most  criti- 
cal and  unexpected  junctures,  they  may  subject  the  whole 
economy  of  human  life  to  jolts  and  sudden  derangements 
which  might  be  enough  for  its  overthrow.  These  fears, 
enhanced  though  they  have  been  of  late  by  the  outrages 
of  workmen  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  would  speed- 
ily be  dissipated,  we  believe,  under  the  light  of  growing 
experience.  The  repeal  of  the  combination  laws  has  not 
even  yet  been  adequately  tried.  The  effervescence  which 
has  followed  on  that  repeal  is  the  natural  and,  we  believe, 
the  temporary  effect  of  the  anterior  state  of  things.  There 
was  nothing  more  likely  than  that  the  people,  when  put  in 

possession  of  a  power  which  they  felt  to  be  altogether  new, 

306 


COMBINATIONS   FOR   RAISING    WAGES  307 

would  take  a  delight  in  the  exercise  of  it,  and  break  forth 
into  misplaced  and  most  extravagant  manifestations.  But 
if  the  conduct  of  the  one  party  have  been  extravagant, 
the  alarm  of  the  other  party  we  conceive  to  have  been 
equally  extravagant.  We  trust  that  the  alarm  may  have 
been  in  part  dissipated,  ere  Government  shall  be  induced 
to  legislate  any  further  upon  the  subject,  or  to  trench  by 
any  of  its  acts  on  the  great  principle  of  every  man  being 
entitled  to  make  the  most  of  his  own  labor,  and  also  of 
acting  in  concert  with  his  fellows  for  the  production  of 
a  general  benefit,  as  great  as  they  can  possibly  make  out 
to  the  whole  body  of  laborers. 

The  repeal  of  the  combination  laws  in  England  has 
been  attended  with  consequences  which  strongly  remind 
us  of  the  consequences  that  ensued,  after  the  Revolution, 
from  the  repeal  of  the  game  laws  in  France.  The  whole 
population,  thrown  agog  by  their  new  privilege,  poured 
forth  upon  the  country,  and,  variously  accoutred,  made 
war,  in  grotesque  and  unpractised  style,  upon  the  fowls 
of  the  air  and  the  beasts  of  the  field.  In  a  few  months, 
however,  the  extravagance  subsided,  and  the  people  re- 
turned to  their  old  quiescent  habits  and  natural  occupa- 
tions. .  .  .  We  feel  assured  that,  in  like  manner,  this 
delirium  of  a  newly  awakened  faculty  among  our  British 
workmen  will  speedily  pass  away.  They  will  at  length 
become  wise  and  temperate  in  the  use  of  it.  Neither 
party,  in  fact,  well  understand  how  to  proceed  in  the  un- 
wonted relation  wherein  they  now  stand  to  each  other. 
There  is  indefinite  demand  upon  the  one  side ;  upon  the 
other  there  are  distrust  and  a  most  sensitive  dread  of  en- 


308  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

croachment.  They  have  not  yet  completed  their  trial  of 
strength,  and  just  because  in  ignorance  of  each  other's 
powers  there  are  yet  the  effort  and  the  excitation  and  the 
busy  rivalship  of  a  still  undetermined  conflict. 

First,  for  the  question,  "  What  were  the  right  enact- 
ment in  regard  to  combinations,  on  the  pure  and  abstract 
principles  of  law  ?  ".  .  .  The  great  principle  of  law  upon 
this,  and  upon  every  other  subject  is,  that  it  should  quad- 
rate as  much  as  it  can  possibly  be  made  to  do,  with  obvious 
morality.  It  is  most  desirable  that  whatever  the  legislat- 
ure shall  ordain  to  be  a  crime,  and  liable  to  punishment, 
should  be  felt  as  a  crime  by  man's  natural  conscience. 
In  every  case,  when  there  is  a  want  of  sympathy  between 
the  enactments  of  the  statute-book  and  the  dictates  of  nat- 
ural virtue,  there  is  an  expenditure  and  loss  of  strength 
incurred  by  the  government  of  a  country,  when  it  either 
ordains  such  enactments  or  carries  them  into  effect.  It  is 
sure  to  lose  ground  thereby  in  public  or  popular  estima- 
tion; and  when  the  arbitrary  regulations  of  a  state  are 
thus  made  to  thwart  and  run  counter  to  the  independent 
feelings  and  judgments  of  men,  this  is  certain  to  infuse 
an  element  of  weakness  into  the  body  politic.  The  heart- 
burnings of  him  who  suffers  the  penalty  meet  with  power- 
ful re-enforcement  in  the  sympathy  of  all  his  fellows. 
He  feels  himself  to  be  a  martyr  or  a  hero,  and  not  a  crim- 
inal ;  and,  if  treated  as  a  criminal,  this  only  puts  a  gener- 
ous indignancy  into  his  heart,  in  which  he  is  supported  by 
a  kindred  sentiment  among  all  the  free  and  noble  spirits 
of  the  land.  .  .  . 

On  the  other  hand,  let  law    .    .    .    be  at  one  with  the 


COMBINATIONS   FOR   RAISING    WAGES  309 

voice  of  the  heart,  insomuch  that  all  the  denunciations  of 
the  statute-book  are  echoed  to  by  the  universal  sense  of 
justice  in  society,  and  every  act  of  such  a  legislation  will 
inconceivably  strengthen  the  authority  from  which  it 
emanates.  .  .  . 

Now  we  fear  that  there  have  been  times  when  both 
these  principles  were  traversed  by  Government  in  its  man- 
agement of  combinations.  For  first,  there  seems  nothing 
criminal  in  the  act  of  a  man  ceasing  to  work  at  the  expiry 
of  his  engagement,  because  not  satisfied  with  his  present 
wage,  and  desirous  of  a  higher,  or  in  the  act  of  men  con- 
federated and  doing  jointly,  or  together,  the  same  thing. 
On  the  contrary,  it  seems  altogether  fair  that  each  should 
make  as  much  as  he  can  of  his  own  labor,  and  that  just  as 
dealers  of  the  same  description  meet  and  hold  consulta- 
tions for  the  purpose  of  enhancing  the  price  of  their  com- 
modity, so  it  should  be  equally  competent  for  workmen 
to  deliberate,  and  fix  on  any  common,  if  it  be  not  a  crim- 
inal agreement,  and  that  to  enhance,  if  they  can,  the  price 
of  their  own  services. 

There  really  is  nothing  morally  wrong  in  all  this ;  and, 
however  a  man  may  be  treated  on  account  of  it  as  a  delin- 
quent by  the  law,  he  certainly  is  not  regarded  as  a  de- 
linquent in  the  eye  of  natural  conscience.  It  was  because 
of  this  discrepancy,  between  nature  and  law,  that  we 
held  it  a  good  thing  when,  by  the  repeal  act,  it  was  ex- 
punged from  the  statute-book,  and  we  hope  that  no  sub- 
sequent act  will  again  restore  it.  ... 

But,  secondly,  while  Government  on  the  one  hand,  by 
its  penalties  against  the  simple  act  of  combination,  put 


310  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

forth  a  vigor  far  beyond  the  natural  dimensions  of  this 
alleged  enormity,  they,  on  the  other  hand,  have  not  been 
declared  and  rigorous  enough  against  those  real  enormi- 
ties, which  are  often  attendant  on  combinations.  .  .  . 
The  members  of  a  combination  proceed  to  a  very  great 
and  undeniable  crime  when  they  put  forth  a  hand,  or 
even  utter  dark  and  terrifying  threats  of  violence  to  those 
who  are  willing  to  work.  This  is  the  point  against  which 
the  whole  force  of  legislation  ought  to  be  directed.  .  .  . 
In  consistency  with  their  own  great  and  glorious  principle 
of  freedom,  they  should  guard  to  the  uttermost  the  free- 
dom of  those  who  are  willing  from  the  tyranny  and  vio- 
lence of  those  who  are  not  willing  to  work.  .  .  . 

We  must  pass  from  the  abstract  jurisprudence  of  the 
question  to  the  gross  and  living  experience  of  the  question. 
.  .  .  It  is  not  by  the  mere  categories  of  ethical  science 
that  such  a  question  ought  to  be  determined.  ...  It 
is  only  by  a  survey  abroad,  and  over  the  domain  of  busi- 
ness and  familiar  life  that  he  learns  to  modify,  when 
needful,  the  generalizations  of  abstract  thought  by  the 
demands  of  a  felt  and  urgent  expediency.  .  .  .  The 
complex  workings  of  what  may  be  termed  the  economic 
mechanism  are  altogether  at  one  with  the  simplicities  of 
theory.  We  hold  that  there  are  certain  natural  securities 
for  a  right  adjustment  between  masters  and  servants,  in 
the  very  relationship  itself,  which  ought  to  supersede  the 
interference  of  Government — we  mean  its  interference 
for  any  other  object  than  the  enforcement  of  justice  be- 
tween the  parties,  and  the  protection  of  both  from  all 
sorts  of  personal  violence.  .  .  . 


COMBINATIONS   FOR   RAISING    WAGES  311 

The  great  compensation  for  the  evils  of  a  strike  is  the 
power  which  masters  have  of  replacing  those  who  have 
struck  by  other  hands.  .  .  . 

[Here  follow  illustrations  of  the  success  of  masters  re- 
placing the  striking  workmen,  and  so  bringing  them  to 
terms.  Among  the  examples  given,  apparently  without 
realizing  the  horror  of  the  situation  for  the  workmen,  he 
complacently  describes  the  importation  of  cheap  work- 
men, which  made  the  English  workmen  the  slaves  of  the 
beggars  of  other  countries.  A  capitalist  tells  his  story 
thus:] 

The  men  whom  we  employed  were  mostly  Irishmen, 
but  were  picked  up  by  us  about  the  place.  Had  we  not 
succeeded  in  getting  them  in  that  way  we  had  determined 
to  send  a  person  to  Ireland  to  recruit  there.  Our  old 
hands,  at  least,  such  as  we  have  chosen  to  employ,  have 
returned  to  their  work,  and  have,  in  a  submissive  manner, 
renounced  the  system  of  associations.  Our  new  colliers 
continue  with  us,  and  are  doing  well. 

These  .  .  .  examples,  selected  almost  at  random, 
from  the  mass  that  lies  before  us,  .  .  .  which  serve 
to  demonstrate  the  facility  wherewith  raw  and  unpractised 
laborers  can  be  rendered  effective  at  least  in  this  impor- 
tant branch  of  industry. 

We  are  aware  that,  in  the  greater  number  of  trades,  a 
laborer  from  the  general  population  is  not  so  speedily 
convertible  to  use  as  in  collieries,  and  that,  therefore,  with 
even  full  security  for  the  new  workmen  a  time  must 
elapse,  and  loss  must  be  incurred,  and  a  most  inconvenient 
suspension  of  the  manufacture  must  take  place,  ere  it  can 


312  CHKISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

again  be  set  a-going  in  the  same  effective  way  as  before. 
The  old  workmen  who  have  struck  cannot  all  at  once  be 
replaced  by  the  same  number,  and  the  new  workmen  who 
succeed  them  cannot  all  at  once  acquire  the  habit  and 
skill  of  their  predecessors.  It  is  certainly  relieving  to 
observe  how  soon  an  ordinary  laborer  can  be  transformed 
into  a  good  collier,  and  even  made  serviceable  in  many 
of  the  branches  of  cotton-spinning.  Yet  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  in  all  those  crafts  and  occupations  which  re- 
quire a  long  apprenticeship  to  be  accomplished  in  their 
mysteries  there  might  be  a  cessation  of  work  which,  if 
persisted  in  beyond  a  certain  length,  might  be  inconven- 
ient to  master  manufacturers,  and  still  more  inconvenient 
'  to  their  customers.  To  look  fairly  and  openly  at  all  the 
possibilities,  one  can  conceive  a  great  extent  of  inconven- 
ience from  a  universal  strike  of  shipwrights,  or  house-car- 
penters, and  still  more,  perhaps,  of  clothiers  and  shoe- 
makers, all  classes  of  workmen  that  cannot  be  so  instantly 
replaced,  as  some  others,  out  of  the  general  population. 

Now  in  the  nature  of  the  case  itself,  there  is  a  sufficient 
protection  even  against  this  evil,  alarming  as  it  may  ap- 
pear, and  that  without  any  express  interference  of  Parlia- 
ment in  the  matter.  We  mean  the  certainty,  that,  sooner 
or  later,  the  workmen  who  have  struck  must  surrender 
themselves  to  terms  of  agreement  with  their  employers. 
They  cannot  hold  out  against  this  self-inflicted  blockade 
beyond  a  certain  period.  There  must,  of  course,  be  a  rapid 
expenditure  of  their  means,  and,  if  living  without  work, 
and  therefore  without  wages,  their  resources  must  soon 
melt  away.  .  .  . 


COMBINATIONS   FOR   RAISING   WAGES  313 

And  what  we  hold  to  be  of  prime  importance  in  this 
argument  is  that  the  result  brought  about  in  this  natural 
way  has  a  far  more  permanent  and  pacifying  effect  upon 
the  workmen  than  when  overborne  out  of  their  combina- 
tion by  the  force  of  legal  restraints  and  the  terror  of  legal 
penalties.  .  .  .  They  will  be  greatly  more  manageable 
after  having  themselves  made  full  trial  of  their  own  im- 
potency,  than  when  festering  under  a  sense  of  the  injus- 
tice and  hostility  wherewith,  under  the  old  combination 
laws,  they  conceived  that  the  hand  of  government  was 
lifted  up  against  the  interests  and  natural  rights  of  their 
order.  It  was  quite  to  be  expected  that  there  should  be 
frequent  and  even  fierce  outbreakings  on  their  part, 
after  the  repeal  of  these  laws,  but,  most  assuredly,  this 
general  experience  of  the  upshot  will  be  of  far  more  heal- 
ing influence  than  anything  so  fitted  to  exasperate  and 
tantalize,  as  the  re-enactment  of  them.  .  .  . 

It  is  really  not  for  the  interest  of  the  masters  that  there 
should  be  a  revival  of  these  laws.  Greatly  better  for 
them,  too,  that  there  should  have  been  a  trial  of  strength, 
after  which  both  parties  are  landed  in  that  state  of  settle- 
ment and  repose  which  comes  after  a  battle  that  has  been 
decisively  terminated.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  SAME   SUBJECT  CONTINUED 

IT  is  competent  for  masters,  too,  to  frame  such  articles 
of  agreement  with  their  workmen,  as  shall  protect  them 
in  a  great  measure  from  any  sudden  or  unlooked-for  ces- 
sations; and  for  the  violation  of  which  these  workmen 
shall  bring  down  upon  themselves  not  the  arbitrary,  but 
the  rightful  penalties  of  law,  and  which  penalties,  should 
it  be  found  necessary,  might  be  still  further  aggravated 
without  any  offence  to  the  principles  of  an  obvious  or  nat- 
ural morality.  They  could  engage  their  laborers  for  a 
service  of  months  instead  of  weeks  or  days,  and  then  put 
forth  a  most  legitimate  strength  to  compel  their  fulfil- 
ment of  the  stipulated  period.  To  make  the  security  more 
effectual  they  could  hire  their  workmen  in  separate  classes 
at  all  separate  periods,  so  that,  at  worst,  it  could  only  be 
a  partial,  and  never  a  universal  strike  at  any  one  time. 
They  could  further  ascertain  beforehand,  as  in  domestic 
service,  whether  any  of  them  mean  to  leave  their  employ- 
ment at  the  termination  of  their  bargain;  and  thus  mas- 
ters, with  time  to  look  about  for  new  workmen,  could 
never  be  caught  unprepared.  .  .  .  Masters  and  manu- 
facturers can  lay  an  assessment  on  the  wages  of  the  re- 
admitted workmen,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  can  take 

m 


COMBINATIONS    AND    WAGES  315 

them  in  again  upon  reduced  wages  till  they  have  re- 
covered, by  the  difference,  a  complete  indemnification 
for  all  that  they  have  suffered  by  the  interruption  of  the 
manufacture.  .  .  . 

At  the  very  worst,  and  though  masters  should  not  be 
wholly  able  to  protect  themselves  from  inconvenience  and 
loss  by  combination,  this  should  just  be  regarded  as  one 
out  of  many  other  hazards  to  which  their  business  is  ex- 
posed. Manifold  are  the  casualties  to  which  they  are  sub- 
jected, whether  from  fire  or  shipwreck,  or  unlooked-for 
fluctuations  in  the  state  of  the  market.  It  is  not  more  the 
part  of  Government  to  interfere  for  their  defence  against 
the  uncertainties  of  the  market  for  labor,  than  against 
the  uncertainties  of  the  market  for  those  commodities  in 
which  they  deal ;  against  the  fitful  elements  of  discontent 
or  cupidity  in  the  minds  of  their  workmen  than  against 
the  fitful  agitations  of  the  weather  or  of  the  ocean.  It  is 
for  them  to  lay  their  account  with  the  chances  and  the 
changes  in  the  price  of  labor  as  well  as  in  the  price, 
whether  of  their  raw  material  or  of  their  finished  com- 
modity, and  just  to  charge  or  to  calculate  accordingly. 

The  master,  in  truth,  is  only  the  ostensible,  or,  at  worst, 
the  temporary  sufferer  by  this  conspiracy  of  his  workmen ; 
and  if  there  be  any  sufferer  at  all  in  the  long  run  it  is  not 
he,  but  the  customer.  He  loses  profit  for  a  season,  but  it 
is  all  made  up  to  him  by  the  eventual  rise  of  profit  that 
ensues  on  the  production  of  his  commodity  being  sus- 
pended. This  is  the  well-known  effect  of  a  general  strike 
among  operatives.  It  relieves  the  overladen  market  of 
the  glut  under  which  it  labors,  and,  by  the  time  that  work- 


316  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

men  at  length  give  in,  the  manufacturer  enters  upon 
what  to  him  is  the  most  enriching  of  all  harvests,  the 
harvest  of  a  brisk  demand  upon  empty  warehouses.  .  .  . 
Would  they  but  withhold  that  perpetual  interference 
by  which  they  are  ever  cramping  and  constraining  the 
liberty  of  things,  they  would  find  how  much  better  the 
laws  of  nature,  and  the  laws  of  political  economy,  pro- 
vide for  the  great  interests  of  human  life  when  unchecked 
by  the  laws  of  Parliament. 

[After  a  repetition  of  the  argument  that  laws  and  com- 
binations cannot  affect  prices  of  labor  or  profits;  that 
natural  economic  laws  will  have  their  way  in  spite  of  ar- 
tificial arrangements;  that  labor  will  be  paid  low  wages 
if  the  number  of  laborers  is  too  great  for  the  demand ;  the 
author  proceeds  to  show  the  laborers  how,  under  natural 
laws,  wages  will  rise  if  the  supply  of  laborers  is  not  exces- 
sive.] 

And  certain  it  is  that  this  will  avail  them  without  the 
expedient  of  any  organized  association  at  all.  For  the 
sake  of  simplicity,  let  us  confine  the  argument  to  any 
one  branch  of  manufacture  which  we  might  suppose  to  be 
in  the  hands  of  a  certain  number  of  capitalists,  and  that 
it  is  somewhat  straitened  for  a  supply  of  laborers.  In 
consequence,  the  commodity  will  be  produced  in  some- 
what less  abundance  than  can  fully  meet  the  demand  for  it 
in  the  market,  and  its  price  inevitably  rises.  This  incre- 
ment of  price,  in  the  first  instance,  raises  the  profits  of  the 
masters,  but  its  final  landing-place  is  among  the  workmen, 
for,  in  the  second  instance,  and  without  combinations,  it 
will  go  to  the  raising  of  the  wages.  The  rise  of  profits 


COMBINATIONS    AND    WAGES  317 

in  any  trade  tends  both  to  create  more  of  capital  within 
the  trade,  and  to  allure  to  it  more  of  capital  from  without. 
In  other  words,  master  manufacturers  will  not  long  be 
permitted  to  enjoy  this  additional  profit;  for  out  of  it 
there  will  almost  instantly  emerge  a  busier  competition, 
either  among  themselves,  or  from  new  adventurers,  en- 
ticed to  this  more  hopeful  walk  of  speculation.  The  pros- 
perity of  any  trade  is  ever  followed  up  both  with  the  means 
and  the  efforts  to  extend  it ;  but  this  cannot  be  done  with- 
out a  call  for  more  operatives  than  before.  Each  individ- 
ual master,  while  the  demand  is  brisker  than  the  supply, 
and  therefore  profits  encouraging,  will  try  to  widen  and 
enlarge  his  own  establishment,  and,  as  the  effect  of  this 
competition  among  all,  a  higher  \vage  will  be  held  out 
than  before  to  laborers.  Let  there  be  an  endeavor  on 
the  part  of  every  capitalist  to  make  out  a  full  complement 
of  workmen,  and  .nothing  more  is  necessary  than  a  diffi- 
culty in  doing  so,  from  the  smallness  of  the  numbers  to 
be  had,  in  order  to  secure  for  those  workmen  a  liberal 
remuneration.  Apart  from  any  association  on  the  side 
of  the  operatives,  their  object  is  gained  by  a  competition 
on  the  side  of  their  masters.  And  all  which  they  have  to 
do  is  to  cultivate,  each  in  his  own  family,  those  habits  of 
foresight  and  sobriety,  without  which  it  is  utterly  impos- 
sible, either  by  device  or  by  violence,  to  save  them  from 
the  miseries  of  an  over-peopled  land. 

This  of  itself  will  elevate  the  condition  of  the  working 
classes.  Let  there  be  somewhat  more  of  virtue  in  their 
conduct,  and  somewhat  more  of  prudence  and  delay  in 
their  marriages,  and  there  will  forthwith  commence  that 


318  CHRISTIAN    AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

progress  by  which,  silently  and  gradually  and  indefinitely, 
the  price  of  their  services  must  rise,  and  themselves  must 
ascend  to  a  higher  status  in  the  commonwealth.  And  all 
this  without  the  turmoil  and  effervescence  of  combina- 
tions. These  can  never  permanently  raise  the  price  of 
labor.  There  is  one  precise  point  at  which  this  price  set- 
tles, and  this  point  is  altogether  determined  by  the  pro- 
portion which  obtains  between  the  work  to  be  done,  and 
the  number  of  workmen  that  are  to  be  had  for  the  doing 
of  it.  .  .  . 

Everything  in  the  state  and  history  of  the  commercial 
world  announces  how  little  capitalists  have  it  in  their 
power  to  sustain  an  extravagant  rate  of  profit,  for  any 
length  of  time,  at  the  expense  of  their  customers  or  of 
their  workmen.  It  is  a  prevalent  impression  among  work- 
men that  they  are  too  much  at  the  mercy  of  capitalists.  If 
they  only  knew  the  whole  truth  they  would  soon  perceive 
that  capitalists  are  wholly  at  the  mercy  of  each  other ;  and 
in  such  a  way  that  without  being  able  to  help  it  they  are 
very  much  at  the  mercy  of  their  workmen.  At  least,  if  it 
be  not  so,  it  is  altogether  the  fault  of  the  workmen  them- 
selves, who,  by  the  simple  regulation  of  their  numbers 
might,  not  in  a  way  of  turbulence,  but  in  a  way  of  order 
and  peace,  become  the  effectual  dictators  in  every  ques- 
tion between  them  and  their  employers. 

These  employers  cannot,  though  they  would,  reserve 
in  profit  to  themselves  any  part  of  that,  which,  in  the 
state  of  the  labor  market,  must  go  in  wages  to  their  labor- 
ers. They  cannot  keep  up  their  profits  beyond  a  certain 
rate  at  the  expense  of  their  workmen,  and  in  the  progress 


COMBINATIONS    AND    WAGES  319 

of  things,  too,  this  rate  is  constantly  falling.  For  how 
short  a  time  can  any  lucrative  branch  of  trade  be  upheld 
in  its  lucrativeness !  In  a  few  months  the  rush  of  capital 
fills  it  to  an  overflow.  Let  but  a  stage-coach  upon  any 
road,  or  a  steamboat  upon  any  river,  have  realized  the 
smallest  centage  of  excess  above  the  ordinary  profits  of 
the  country,  and,  in  a  moment,  by  other  coaches  and 
other  boats,  the  excess,  or  perhaps  the  whole  profit  alto- 
gether is  annihilated.  The  same  holds  true  of  every  other 
department.  Each  is  crowded  with  capital,  and  profit,  all 
over  the  land,  is  rapidly  verging  to  a  minimum.  This  is 
satisfactorily  demonstrated  by  the  fall  in  the  interest  of 
money;  and  perhaps  a  still  more  striking  exhibition  of  it 
is  the  way  in  which  capital  is  going  about  among  all  the 
schemes  and  possibilities  of  investiture  that  are  now  afloat, 
and  absolutely  begging  for  employment.  With  such  a 
creative  and  accumulating  force  in  capital  the  laboring 
classes  may  be  in  perfect  security,  that  any  hostile  com- 
bination of  their  masters  against  them  must  speedily  be 
neutralized,  by  competition  among  themselves.  .  .  . 

And,  for  ourselves,  we  confess  it  to  be  a  cheering  an- 
ticipation, that  the  laboring  classes  shall,  not  by  a  midway 
passage  of  anarchy  and  misrule,  but  by  a  tranquil  process 
of  amelioration  in  their  character  and  habits,  make  steady 
amelioration  at  the  same  time  in  their  outward  circum- 
stances. We  believe  it  to  be  in  reserve  for  society,  that, 
of  the  three  component  ingredients  of  value,  the  wages 
of  labor  shall  at  length  rise  to  a  permanently  higher  pro- 
portion than  they  now  have,  either  to  the  profit  of  stock 
or  the  rent  of  land,  and  that  thus,  workmen  will  share 


320  CHBISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

more  equally  than  they  do  at  present,  with  capitalists 
and  proprietors  of  the  soil,  in  the  comforts  and  even  the 
elegancies  of  life.  But  this  will  not  be  the  achievement 
of  desperadoes.  It  will  be  come  at  through  a  more  peace- 
ful medium,  through  the  medium  of  a  growing  worth  and 
growing  intelligence  among  the  people.  It  will  bless 
and  beautify  that  coming  period,  when  a  generation,  hu- 
manized by  letters,  and  elevated  by  the  light  of  Chris- 
tianity, shall,  in  virtue  of  a  higher  taste  and  a  larger  ca- 
pacity than  they  now  possess,  cease  to  grovel  as  they  do  at 
present  among  the  sensualities  of  a  reckless  dissipation. 

This  dissipation  stands  often  associated  with  a  stout  and 
sullen  defiance,  and  the  two  together  characterize  a  large 
class  of  the  mechanics  of  our  present  day.  But  these  are 
not  the  men  who  are  to  accomplish  the  enlargement  of 
that  order  to  which  they  belong ;  at  one  time  on  the  brink 
of  starvation  by  their  own  extravagance,  and  then  lying 
prostrate  at  the  dictation  of  their  employers;  at  another, 
in  some  season  of  fitful  prosperity,  made  giddy  with  am- 
bition, and  breaking  forth  in  the  complaints  and  the 
clamors  of  an  appetency  which  is  never  satisfied.  It  is 
not  by  such  a  process  of  starts  and  convulsions  as  this  that 
our  working  classes  are  to  be  borne  upward  to  that  place 
of  security  and  strength,  which,  nevertheless,  we  believe 
to  be  awaiting  them.  But  there  is  no  other  foundation 
than  that  of  their  own  sobriety  and  good  principle  on 
which  it  can  solidly  be  reared.  And  the  process  in  this 
way  may  easily  be  apprehended.  In  proportion  as  man 
becomes  more  reflective  and  virtuous,  in  that  proportion 
does  he  seek  something  higher  than  the  mere  gratifica- 


COMBINATIONS    AND    WAGES  321 

tions  of  his  animal  nature.  His  desires  take  a  wider  range, 
and  he  will  not  be  satisfied  but  with  a  wider  range  of  en- 
joyment. There  is  a  growing  demand  for  certain  objects 
of  taste  and  decency;  and  even  the  mind  will  come  to  re- 
quire a  leisure  and  a  literature  for  the  indulgence  of  its 
nobler  appetites,  now  brought  into  play  by  means  of  a 
diffused  education.  Altogether,  under  such  a  regimen  as 
this,  the  heart  of  a  workman  is  made  to  aspire  after  greater 
things  than  before,  and  in  perfect  keeping  and  harmony 
with  a  soul  now  awakened  to  the  charms  of  that  philos- 
ophy which  is  brought  down  to  his  understanding  in  a 
mechanic  school,  is  it  that  he  should  hold  as  indispen- 
sable to  his  comfort  a  better  style  of  accommodations  than 
his  forefathers,  whether  in  apparel,  or  furniture,  or  lodg- 
ing. And  it  is  just  by  means  of  a  more  elevated  standard 
than  before,  that  marriages  become  later  and  less  fre- 
quent than  before.  .  .  .  The  man  who  counts  it  enough 
for  himself  and  his  family  that  they  have  rags,  and  pota- 
toes, and  a  hovel,  will  rush  more  improvidently,  and  there- 
fore more  early,  into  the  married  state,  than  he  who  feels 
that,  without  a  better  provision  and  a  better  prospect  than 
these,  he  should  offend  his  own  self-respect,  and  com- 
promise all  his  notions  of  what  is  decent,  or  dignified,  or 
desirable.  .  .  . 

If  we  except  the  state  of  still  youthful  colonies,  we 
shall  be  sure  to  find  that,  corresponding  to  the  differenqe 
in  the  average  standard  of  enjoyment,  is  there  a  difference 
in  the  average  period  of  marriage.  The  higher  the  one 
is  the  later  the  other  is.  .  .  . 

In  the  act  of  dealing  equally  with  the  various  classes 
21 


322  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

of  society  it  is  perhaps  impossible  to  avoid  saying  what 
might  occasionally  be  offensive  to  them  all.  And  if,  on 
the  one  hand,  there  are  laborers  who  need  to  be  rebuked 
out  of  their  turbulence  and  unjust  discontent,  so,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  are  still  a  few  of  the  British  aristocracy 
who  eye  with  jealousy  and  dread  all  the  advances  that  are 
making  by  the  people  in  knowledge,  and  even  in  the  suf- 
ficiency and  style  of  their  enjoyments.  More  especially 
have  recent  outbreakings  of  workmen  engendered  in  cer- 
tain quarters  a  dislike  of  savings-banks,  as  the  likely  or- 
gans of  building  up  a  capital  for  the  lower  orders,  as 
might  be  the  instrument  at  length  of  a  popular  despotism, 
at  once  the  most  fearful  in  itself,  and  the  most  destructive 
of  all  the  great  political  and  economic  interests  in  our 
land. 

[The  workmen  who  save  a  little  property  will  not  rashly 
rush  into  strikes  under  the  lead  of  demagogues.  Chalmers 
forgets  that  an  associated  fund  is  protected  from  hasty 
action  by  exactly  the  same  motives,  and  that  a  strike  which 
must  be  discussed  in  labor  parliaments  is  the  fruit  of  a 
mental  process  of  reflection  and  consideration  which  has 
immense  educative  value.] 

And  there  is  a  very  substantial,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
a  very  pure  compensation,  awaiting  the  higher  classes  of 
society,  for  this  encroachment  that  is  made  upon  them  by 
the  increased  wages  of  the  lower.  It  is  founded  upon 
this:  the  greater  amount  and  value  of  the  services  that 
will  then  be  rendered.  .  .  .  There  are  a  power  and  a 
charm,  in  a  certain  generous  style  of  remuneration,  the 


COMBINATIONS    AND    WAGES  323 

whole  benefit  of  which  will  come  to  be  realized  in  that 
better  state  of  things  to  which  WTC  believe  that  society  is 
fast  tending.  We  are  aware  of  the  union  which  often  ob- 
tains in  large  manufacturing  establishments,  between  the 
enormous  wage,  and  the  reckless,  loathsome  dissipation 
of  its  workmen.  But,  ere  the  higher  wage  that  we  con- 
template shall  obtain  throughout  the  country  at  large, 
this  recklessness  must  have  very  generally  disappeared, 
and  a  sober,  reflective,  and  well-principled  character  sub- 
stituted in  its  place.  .  .  . 

The  same  lesson  is  afforded  by  the  reverse  experience 
of  those  farmers  who  employ  a  set  of  worthless,  degraded, 
and  half -paid  paupers,  in  the  business  of  their  agriculture. 
They  are  far  more  unprofitable  as  workmen  than  the 
regular  servants  who  obtain  a  full  and  respectable  allow- 
ance. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

ON  CERTAIN  PREVALENT  ERRORS  AND  MISCONCEP- 
TIONS WHICH  ARE  FOSTERED  BY  ECONOMIC  THE- 
ORIES, AND  WHICH  ARE  FITTED  TO  MISLEAD  THE 
LEGISLATURE  IN  REGARD  TO  LABOR  AND  THE 
LABORING  CLASSES 

[THE  author  asserts  that  the  obstacles  to  reform  are 
found  in  the  prejudices  of  the  rich  and  educated  classes 
as  truly  as  in  the  minds  of  the  laborers.  Many  merchants 
and  manufacturers  lose  sight  of  the  end  of  business,  and 
consider  the  means  as  vital.  The  end  of  all  production 
is  consumption.  Trade  and  manufactures  have  all  their 
worth  and  significancy  as  subservient  to,  and  none  what- 
ever apart  from,  the  enjoyment  of  consumers.  Adherents 
of  the  fast-disappearing  mercantile  system  seem  to  think 
that  the  stoppage  of  commerce  or  factories  is  the  evil, 
whereas  the  real  evil  lies  in  the  rise  in  price  of  food  and 
coal,  necessaries  of  life  for  the  people.  The  real  good  of 
shawls  lies  in  the  wearing  of  them,  not  in  the  weaving  of 
them.  The  factory  or  the  ship  is  not  an  end  but  a  means 
to  the  production  of  commodities  which  satisfy  wants. 
If  trade  is  left  free  the  people  will  purchase  out  of  their 
possessions  what  they  desire  to  enjoy.  Consumers  thus 
determine  the  direction  of  employment.  It  will  not  be 
necessary  for  the  government  to  punish  laborers  for  com- 
bining; if  left  to  themselves  they  will  work  or  starve, 
and  in  addition  to  fear  of  hunger  no  other  compulsion 
is  needed. 

If  the  articles  manufactured  are  luxuries  the  consumer 

324 


CERTAIN    ERRORS    AND   MISCONCEPTIONS          325 

can  reduce  the  price  merely  by  abstaining-  from  tlicir  use 
until  the  price  has  fallen.  This  is  largely  true  even  of 
more  necessary  commodities,  as  shoes.  Even  here  the 
consumers  may  compel  the  producers  to  be  reasonable 
in  price  by  doing  without  until  the  goods  are  within  their 
reach.  Chalmers  is  arguing  here  against  legal  suppres- 
sion of  trade-unions,  and  his  argument  is  based  on  the  idea 
that  workmen  can  be  brought  to  terms  by  consumers  in 
another  way  and  without  violence  or  police  force,  merely 
by  refusing  to  buy  their  products  until  the  price  is  reason- 
able. A  combination  of  farmers  is  next  to  impossible,  and 
it  is  they  who  produce  the  most  necessary  articles.] 

We  have  just  as  little  to  apprehend  for  the  destruction 
of  a  nation's  capital  from  these  combinations  as  for  the  ul- 
timate disappearance  or  diminution  of  a  nation's  industry. 
The  one  delusive  fear,  however,  is  fully  as  inveterate  as 
the  other,  and,  accordingly,  in  the  report  by  the  Select 
Committee  on  the  Combination  Laws  we  find  a  strongly 
expressed  alarm  lest  "  capital  be  withdrawn  or  trans- 
ported ;  "  and  so,  lest  "  the  source  of  every  branch  of  our 
industry  should  gradually  be  cut  off,  and  the  whole  labor- 
ing population  of  the  country  consigned  to  the  distress 
and  misery,  which  it  is  the  tendency  of  the  ill-advised 
combinations,  in  which  so  great  a  portion  of  it  is  im- 
plicated, rapidly  and  inevitably  to  produce." 

This  introduction  of  capital  into  the  argument  sug- 
gests a  new  topic  of  alarm.  It  serves  to  complicate,  and  so 
to  cast  an  obscurity  over  the  whole  subject.  We  know 
how  closely  associated  fear  is  with  indistinct  vision;  and 
in  as  far  as  the  import  and  the  precise  function  of  capital 
are  dimly  apprehended,  in  so  far  is  the  mind  liable  to 


326  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

dread  and  to  disturbance  from  the  imagination  of  any 
hazard  to  which  it  may  be  exposed. 

[The  wasted  capital,  from  whatever  cause  the  waste  oc- 
curs, is  soon  replaced  at  a  temporary  inconvenience  of 
wage  earners  and  the  consuming  public. 

It  is  possible  to  imagine  such  a  total  destruction  of  capi- 
tal that  the  population  would  perish.  But,  practically, 
modern  peoples  are  not  alarmed  at  this  prospect.  After 
the  death  of  a  large  number  of  people  by  war  or  pestilence 
the  number  speedily  rises  from  increase  of  births.  So 
the  destruction  of  wealth  is  rapidly  followed  by  augment- 
ed production,  and  soon  capital  is  so  plentiful  as  to  go 
begging  for  investment.  We  do  not  think  it  necessary 
to  offer  premiums  for  large  families,  as  was  once  thought 
desirable;  the  fear  is  rather  that  numbers  will  grow  too 
rapidly.  And  capital  will  grow,  under  natural  conditions, 
without  legislation  and  simply  by  the  action  of  natural 
desires  working  in  freedom.  "  Capital  does  not  suffer, 
though  there  are  many  spendthrifts;  just  as  the  popula- 
tion does  not  suffer  in  extent,  though  there  are  many  old 
bachelors."] 

So  that  capital,  like  population,  is  one  of  those  self- 
regulating  interests,  the  care  of  which  does  not  properly 
belong  to  the  legislature.  The  fear  lest  it  should  depart 
from  our  kingdom  by  successive  removals  is  altogether 
chimerical.  The  very  first  portion  that  went  abroad,  if 
only  large  enough  for  the  effect,  would  cause  a  larger 
profit  at  home,  which  should  act  first  by  a  detaining  power 
on  the  capital  that  was  left  behind,  and  then,  by  an  extend- 
ing power,  again  to  fill  up  the  vacancy.  It  is  not  for 
government  to  concern  itself  about  an  interest  which  the 


CERTAIN    ERRORS   AND    MISCONCEPTIONS          327 

laws  of  political  economy  have  abundantly  provided  for. 
There  may  be  a  call  upon  its  justice  when  the  rights  of 
any  one  order  of  men  are  encroached  upon  by  the  ag- 
gression of  another,  but  let  not  this  be  complicated  with 
other  objects,  as  on  the  occasion  before  us;  nor  let  it  im- 
agine any  call  upon  its  wisdom  or  its  authority  for  the 
protection  of  an  economic  interest  that  is  abundantly 
safe  without  its  interference. 

The  intimidation  of  new  or  strange  workmen  by  others, 
who,  either  by  wealth,  or  by  numbers,  are  more  powerful 
than  themselves,  is  not  to  be  borne  with,  and  no  expense, 
whether  of  agency  or  treasure,  should  be  spared  to  put  it 
down.  We  should  rather  that  half  the  British  navy  were 
put  into  requisition  to  insure  the  manning  of  our  mer- 
chant vessels  by  the  sailors  who  would,  than  that  any  ob- 
struction should  remain  impracticable,  which  may  have 
been  thrown  in  their  way  by  the  sailors  who  would  not. 
At  a  hundredth  part,  we  believe,  of  this  exertion,  all  that 
is  needed  or  that  is  desirable  in  this  way  could  be  accom- 
plished. But  still,  while  the  fermentation  lasts,  and  ere 
that  full  experience,  so  tranquillizing  to  workmen  them- 
selves, is  not  yet  completed,  it  should  be  the  distinct  ob- 
ject of  our  nation's  policy  and  of  our  nation's  police  to 
protect  the  independence  of  all  persecuted  workmen. 
And,  for  such  an  object,  we  are  sure  that  the  voice  of  the 
nation  would  go  most  thoroughly  along  with  it.  Con- 
nected with  a  purpose  like  this,  a  strong  executive  would 
be  hailed  by  all  the  true  patriots  of  our  land ;  employed, 
as  it  would  be,  not  in  fastening  the  chains  of  a  universal 
oppression,  but  in  unlocking  those  chains,  and  so  acting 


328  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC   ECONOMY 

as  the  guarantee  and  the  guardian  of  a  universal  liberty. 
It  seems  an  axiom  in  the  rights  of  men  that  none  shall 
be  forced  to  work  who  is  unwilling.  But  surely  it  is  an 
axiom  as  indisputable  that  all  shall  be  suffered  to  work 
who  are  willing.  The  line  of  equity  between  them  is  on 
the  one  hand,  to  permit  the  combination,  and,  on  the 
other,  to  protect  all  who  do  not  belong  to  them  from  the 
terror  and  the  tyranny  of  combinations.  So  long  as  they 
are  not  permitted,  the  popular  mind  will  continue  to  fester 
under  a  sense  of  provocation,  that  will  have  much  of  the 
semblance  and  somewhat,  perhaps,  of  the  reality  of  jus- 
tice in  it.  And  this  will  be  further  influenced  by  the 
imaginary  virtue  which  they  will  still  ascribe  to  an  expedi- 
ent not  yet  fully  tried,  and  from  which  they  will  con- 
ceive themselves  to  be  debarred  by  the  hand  of  arbitrary 
power.  But,  with  the  permission  to  them,  and  the  pro- 
tection to  all  others,  not  one  shadow  of  complaint  will  be 
left  to  them.  They  will  have  leave  to  try  their  own 
boasted  expedient,  and  it  will  be  a  pacific  experience,  both 
to  the  country  and  to  themselves:  for  sooner  far  than 
our  fears  will  allow  us  to  think,  they  will  make  full  proof 
of  its  impotency.  We  feel  persuaded  that,  in  a  few 
months,  this  feverishness  would  subside,  and  at  length 
give  way  to  the  sound  and  the  settled  conviction,  that, 
after  all,  by  the  turbulence  of  their  politics  and  associated 
plans,  nothing  is  to  be  gained.  And  so  we  should  look 
for  a  tranquillity  more  solid  than  our  land  has  ever  yet 
enjoyed,  as  the  precious  fruit  of  that  temperate,  yet  firm 
legislation,  which  can  at  once  be  tolerant  of  combinations, 
yet  most  sternly  intolerant  of  crimes, 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

ON    THE    EFFECT  WHICH    THE  HIGH    PRICE   OF    LABOR 
IN  A  COUNTRY  HAS  UPON  ITS  FOREIGN  TRADE 

THERE  can  be  no  doubt  of  that  impartial  spirit  which 
so  honorably  signalizes  the  rulers  of  our  country,  and  in 
virtue  of  which  they  have  the  unquestionable  inclination 
to  deal  fairly  and  equally  with  all.  We  do  not  think  that 
the  most  enthusiastic  friends  of  the  lower  orders  can  re- 
proach our  Government  with  an  undue  bias  to  the  other 
classes  of  society,  or,  if  ever,  in  arbitrating  between  them, 
there  is  a  seeming  preference  of  masters  to  servants,  that 
they  have  been  led  to  it,  either  by  a  partiality  of  affection 
toward  the  rich,  or  by  any  lordly  indifference  to  the  rights 
and  interests  of  the  poor.  There  is  a  principle  of  even- 
handed  justice  which  runs  throughout  nearly  all  the  pub- 
lic administrations  of  our  land,  and  when  at  any  time 
bewildered  from  this  rectilinear  path,  it  is,  generally 
speaking,  not  a  favoritism  toward  one  order  of  the  com- 
munity, but  a  false  imagination  of  what  is  best  for  the 
interests  of  all  the  orders  that  leads  them  astray.  In 
other  words,  theirs  is  an  honest,  though  at  times  a  mis- 
taken legislation,  and  to  this  naught  has  contributed  more 
than  a  dim-sighted  political  economy,  a  science  through 

the  opacities  of  which,  when  Parliament  does  attempt  to 

329 


330  CHEISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

flounder,  it  is  almost  purely  and  uprightly  for  the  best. 
.  .  .  We  think  that  there  are  certain  economic  dogmata 
which  do  sway  our  politicians  against  the  cause  and  in- 
terest of  the  working  classes,  and  which  dispose  them  to 
look  adversely  and  fearfully  to  that  higher  status  toward 
which  a  virtuous  and  intelligent  peasantry  must  at  length 
make  their  way. 

This  proceeds  from  the  association,  in  their  minds,  be- 
tween a  rise  in  the  price  of  British  labor,  and  a  propor- 
tional fall  in  the  extent  and  prosperity  of  British  com- 
merce. It  will  bring  down,  it  is  thought,  our  ascendency 
in  foreign  markets ;  and  the  introduction  of  this  new  ele- 
ment, like  the  problem  of  the  three  bodies  in  physics,  has 
thickened  the  perplexities  of  the  whole  speculation.  Its 
general  effect  is  to  give  a  hostile  feeling  toward  a  liberal 
remuneration  for  the  industry  of  workmen  at  home,  lest 
this  should  proceed  so  far  as  to  limit,  and  perhaps  destroy, 
our  merchandise  abroad,  and  so  bereave  our  nation  of  the 
gains  of  that  merchandise.  It  is  thus  conceived  that  the 
avenues  may  be  closed  of  that  trade  which  binds  us  to 
the  surrounding  world,  and  by  which  the  whole  world,  it 
is  thought,  becomes  tributary  to  the  wealth  and  impor- 
tance of  our  empire.  The  price  of  labor  forms  one  main 
ingredient  of  the  price  of  every  commodity  which  labor  is 
brought  up  into.  Should  this  price  then  become  too  high 
at  home  the  price  of  its  produce  may  become  too  high  for 
being  disposed  of  abroad.  .  .  . 

[Here  follows  the  author's  theory  of  foreign  trade. 
The  only  inconvenience  from  the  loss  of  foreign  trade, 


HIGH    WAGES    AND    FOREIGN    TRADE  331 

in  wine,  for  example,  would  be  that  the  consumers  of 
that  article  would  have  to  do  without  it  and  substitute 
some  other  means  of  enjoyment  in  its  place.  Capital  and 
labor  would,  with  some  temporary  loss,  find  occupation 
and  produce  commodities  to  support  the  population,  even 
if  all  foreign  trade  were  lost.  The  conclusion  is:] 

There  is  no  country  whose  clear  and  substantial  in- 
terests would  be  less  endangered  by  a  high  standard  of 
enjoyment  among  our  workmen,  and  a  consequent  high 
remuneration  for  their  work,  than  those  of  Great  Britain. 
Such  are  her  natural  advantages,  that  even  with  a  great 
comparative  dearness  of  labor,  she  could  maintain  that 
superiority,  or  rather  that  equality  in  foreign  markets, 
which  is  really  all  that  is  desirable.  So  that  without  let 
or  hinderance  from  any  apprehension  in  this  quarter,  she 
may  give  herself  indefinitely  up  to  the  pure  and  patriotic 
task  of  raising  the  condition  by  raising  the  character  of 
her  peasantry. 

We  are  abundantly  sensible  that  the  argument  of  this 
chapter  is  altogether  superfluous  to  those  who,  with  Ricar- 
do  and  his  followers,  maintain  the  doctrine  that  profits 
fall  just  to  the  extent  that  wages  rise.  It  were  out  of 
place  to  offer  here  any  estimate  of  this  doctrine,  nor  is  it 
necessary  for  any  present  or  practical  object  of  ours,  see- 
ing that  the  economists  of  this  school  can  have  no  such 
alarm  as  it  is  the  purpose  of  our  foregoing  observations 
to  dissipate.  They,  on  the  contrary,  must  regard  the  high 
price  of  British  labor  as  forming,  not  a  prohibition,  but 
a  passport  for  British  commodities  into  foreign  markets. 
The  truth  is  that,  according  to  this  view,  any  rise  in  the 


332  CHRISTIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

element  of  labor  must  be  more  than  compensated  from  the 
element  of  a  reduced  profit,  for  this  last  will  tell  on  each 
successive  transfer  of  the  commodity  from  one  dealer  to 
another;  so  that,  on  the  last  sale  which  it  undergoes  in 
the  market,  it  will  turn  out  to  be  all  the  cheaper  for  the 
work  of  preparing  it,  having  become  dearer  than  before. 
.  .  .  In  their  apprehension  a  liberal  remuneration  for 
the  work  of  British  hands  must  extend  the  sale  of  British 
manufactures.  We  can  scarcely  persuade  ourselves  of 
such  a  result,  and  we  count  it  enough  of  vindication  for 
the  cause,  that,  with  a  far  more  liberal  remuneration 
than  laborers  at  present  enjoy,  there  might  still  be  such 
an  export  of  manufactures  as  would  save  the  exportation 
of  food,  and  so  maintain  the  entireness  of  our  natural 
population. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

ON  MECHANIC  SCHOOLS,  AND  ON  POLITICAL  ECONOMY 
AS   A   BRANCH   OF   POPULAR   EDUCATION 

THE  mechanic  schools  which  are  now  spreading  so 
widely  and  so  rapidly  over  the  face  of  our  land  must  be 
regarded  as  a  mighty  contribution  to  those  other  causes 
which  are  all  working  together  for  the  elevation  of  the 
popular  mind.  But  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the 
scientific  education  which  they  provide  for  those  who 
choose  it  forms  only  one  of  these  causes,  and  that  ere  we 
can  prevail  upon  all,  or  even  upon  a  majority  in  the  work- 
ing classes  of  society  so  to  choose,  there  must  have  been 
anterior  causes,  both  of  a  preparatory  and  of  a  pervading 
nature,  in  previous  operation.  We  can  scarcely  expect 
any  demand  for  a  higher  scholarship  from  those  who  have 
not  been  furnished,  in  some  tolerable  degree,  with  ele- 
mentary learning,  and  we  might  further  affirm,  with  all 
safety,  that  the  most  willing  attendants  on  the  ministra- 
tions of  a  Sabbath,  are  also  the  most  willing  attendants 
on  the  ministrations  of  a  week-day,  instructor.  However 
little  it  may  have  been  reflected  upon,  it  is  not  the  less 
true,  that  there  obtains  a  very  close  affinity  between  a 
taste  for  science  and  a  taste  for  sacredness.  They  are 
both  of  them  refined  abstractions  from  the  grossness  of 

333 


334  CHRISTIAN   AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

the  familiar  and  ordinary  world,  and  the  mind  which 
relishes  either  has  achieves  a  certain  victory  of  the  spirit- 
ual or  the  intellectual  over  the  animal  part  of  our  nature. 
The  two  resemble  in  this,  that  they  make  man  a  more  re- 
flective and  a  less  sensual  being  than  before,  and,  alto- 
gether, impress  a  higher  cast  of  respectability  on  all  his 
habits  and  on  all  his  ways.  It  does  occasionally  happen, 
that,  on  entering  the  house  of  a  mechanic,  the  eye  is 
pleased  with  the  agreeable  spectacle  of  a  well-stored  book- 
case. .  .  .  It  is  generally  the  unfailing  index  of  a 
well-conditioned  family;  and  this,  whether  it  be  loaded 
with  the  puritanic  theology  of  our  forefathers,  or  with  the 
popular  science  of  the  present  day.  Now,  we  are  sure 
that  this  never  can,  from  an  occasional,  become  a  common 
or  a  frequent  exhibition,  but  by  a  progress  through  which 
our  peasantry  must  ascend  to  a  higher  style  of  outward 
comfort  as  well  as  to  a  higher  state  of  mental  cultivation. 
We,  therefore,  hail  the  scientific  education  of  the  people 
as  being  a  most  powerful  auxiliary  toward  a  translation 
so  desirable,  and  we  are  sure,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the 
cause  of  mechanic  schools  will  be  most  powerfully  aided 
by  a  greater  efficiency  being  given,  both  to  the  methods 
of  common  and  of  Christian  education,  in  parishes.  How 
this  can  best  be  accomplished  in  cities  of  overgrown  popu- 
lation we  have  already,  with  all  amplitude,  endeavored 
to  explain,  and  we  barely  refer  to  former  chapters  of  this 
work  for  our  description  of  those  processes  by  which  we 
conceive  that  the  lessons  both  of  religion  and  of  ordinary 
scholarship  may  most  effectually  be  served  out  to  plebeian 
families. 


ON   MECHANIC   SCHOOLS  335 

[It  is  not  necessary  that  people  should  know  the  laws 
of  economics  in  order  to  be  induced  to  follow  them.  Edu- 
cation of  any  kind  gives  higher  wants  and  desires,  and 
this  leads  to  reflection  and  forecasting,  and  thus  to  later 
marriages  and  smaller  families,  with  relatively  increased 
wages.] 

This  stands  very  palpably  out  in  the  custom,  at  one 
time  nearly  universal,  of  our  Scottish  peasantry,  when, 
after  the  virtuous  attachment  had  been  formed,  and  the 
matrimonial  promises  had  been  exchanged,  even  years  of 
delay  were  incurred,  ere  the  matrimonial  state  was  en- 
tered upon.  These  years  formed  an  interval  of  economy 
and  exertion  with  each  of  the  parties,  whose  aim  it  was 
to  provide  respectably  in  furniture,  and  in  all  sorts  of 
"  plenishing  "  for  their  future  household.  Here  the  con- 
nection is  quite  distinct  between  a  higher  standard  of  en- 
joyment and  a  later  period  of  marriages.  And  it  was  cer- 
tainly then  by  another  tuition  than  that  of  any  economic 
theory  that  a  habit  in  every  way  so  wholesome  found  its 
establishment  among  our  population.  And  the  exposi- 
tion of  such  a  theory  to  the  understanding  of  the  people 
is  just  as  little  needed  now  for  the  purpose  either  of  re- 
storing or  of  raising  this  practical  habit  amongst  them. 
The  thing  is  brought  about  not  by  means  of  imparting  a 
skill  or  an  intelligence  in  political  economy,  but  simply 
by  those  influences  which  give  a  higher  tone  to  the  char- 
acter, and  of  which  influences  education  may  certainly  be 
regarded  as  one  of  the  most  powerful.  .  .  .  Though 
in  deference  to  a  general,  but  ill-founded  alarm,  the  edu- 
cation of  workmen  in  political  economy  should  be  kept  out 


336  CHEISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

of  these  schools,  another  education  can  be  devised  which 
shall  be  fully  as  effectual  for  the  accomplishment  of  the 
most  desirable  processes  in  political  economy.  They 
might  be  made  to  exemplify  the  principles  in  which  they 
are  not  enlightened,  and,  without  being  taught  the  bear- 
ing which  a  higher  taste  and  style  of  enjoyment  have 
upon  the  circumstances  of  our  peasantry,  they  can  be  led 
to  imbibe  this  taste,  and  so  to  realize  all  its  eventual  bene- 
fits. For  this  purpose,  it  is  not  one,  but  many  kinds  of 
scholarship  that  are  effectual.  Whatever  may  stimulate 
the  powers  of  the  understanding,  or  may  regale  the  appe- 
tite for  speculation,  by  even  that  glimmering  and  imper- 
fect light  which  is  made  to  play,  in  a  mechanic  school, 
among  the  mysteries  of  nature;  or  may  unveil,  though 
but  partially,  the  great  characteristics  of  wisdom  and 
goodness  that  lie  so  profusely  scattered  over  the  face  of 
visible  things,  or  may  both  exalt  and  give  a  wider  com- 
pass to  the  imagination,  or  may  awaken  a  sense  that 
before  was  dormant  to  the  beauties  of  the  divine  work- 
manship and  to  the  charms  of  that  argument,  or  of 
that  eloquence,  by  which  they  are  expounded — each 
and  all  of  these  might  be  pressed  into  the  service  of 
forming  to  ourselves  a  loftier  population.  Every  hour 
that  a  workman  can  reclaim  from  the  mere  drudgeries 
of  bone  and  muscle  will  send  him  back  to  his  workshop 
and  his  home  a  more  erect  and  high-minded  individual 
than  before.  With  his  growing  affinity  to  the  upper 
classes  of  life  in  mental  cultivation,  there  will  spring  up 
an  affinity  of  taste  and  habit,  and  a  growing  desire  of  en- 
largement from  those  various  necessities  by  which  the 


ON  MECHANIC   SCHOOLS  337 

condition  of  a  laborer  may  now  be  straitened  and  de- 
graded. There  will  be  an  aspiration  after  greater  things, 
and  the  more  that  he  is  fitted  by  education  for  intercourse 
with  his  superiors  in  rank,  the  more  will  he  be  assimilated 
to  them  in  taste  for  the  comforts  and  the  decencies  of  life. 
In  the  very  converse  that  he  holds  with  the  lecturer,  who 
one  day  expounds  to  him  the  truths  of  science,  and  another 
day  examines  and  takes  account  of  his  proficiency,  there 
is  a  charm  that  not  only  helps  to  conciliate  him  to  better 
society,  but  that  also  familiarizes  him  in  some  measure 
to  the  tone  of  it.  This  might  only  proceed  a  certain  way ; 
and  yet,  however  little  this  way  is,  it  must  be  obvious 
that  such  a  man  will  not  so  aptly  or  so  heedlessly  rush  into 
marriage,  with  no  other  prospect  before  him  than  a  po- 
tato diet  for  his  constant  regimen,  and  one  closely  huddled 
apartment  for  his  home.  Now,  this  is  all  that  we  want  to 
relieve  the  labor  market  of  the  glut  which  oppresses  it, 
and  so  to  secure  a  higher  wage  for  our  laborers.  Toward 
this  result  the  mechanic  schools  lend  a  most  important 
contribution,  and  they  will  speed  a  most  desirable  process 
in  political  economy,  even  though  they  should  never 
initiate  so  much  as  one  disciple  into  the  principles  of  the 
science. 

Still,  however,  we  hold  it  desirable  that  this  science 
should  be  admitted,  with  others,  into  our  schemes  of  popu- 
lar education,  and  that  for  the  purpose  of  averting  the 
very  mischief  which  many  have  dreaded,  and  which  they 
apprehend  still  from  the  introduction  of  it.  To  this  they 
have  been  led  by  the  very  title  of  our  science,  giving  rise 

to  a  fancied  alliance  in  their  mind  with  politics,  and  in 
22 


338  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

virtue  of  which  they  would  liken  a  lecturer  upon  this 
subject,  in  a  school  of  arts,  to  a  demagogue  in  the  midst 
of  his  radical  auditory.  Now  the  truth  is  that  the  eco- 
nomical science  which  enables  its  disciples  to  assign  the 
causes  of  wealth  is  as  distinct  from  politics  as  is  the  arith- 
metical science  which  enables  its  disciples  to  compute  the 
amount  of  it,  and  there  is  just  as  much  reason  to  fear 
an  approaching  democracy  because  the  people  are  now 
taught  to  calculate  prices  as  there  will  be  when  people  are 
taught  soundly  to  estimate  and  to  reason  upon  the  fluctu- 
ation of  prices.  We  do  not  happen  to  participate  in  the 
alarm  of  those  who  should,  above  all  things,  depreciate, 
from  our  mechanic  institutions,  what  might  strictly  and 
properly  be  termed  the  science  of  politics,  believing,  as 
we  do,  that  all  truth  is  innocent,  and  that  the  greatest 
safety  lies  in  its  widest  circulation.  But  we  confess  a 
more  special  affection  for  the  truths  and  the  doctrines  of 
political  economy,  and,  so  far  from  dreading,  do  greatly 
desiderate  the  introduction  of  its  lessons  into  all  those 
seminaries  which  have  been  instituted  for  the  behoof  of 
our  common  people.  It  is  utterly  a  mistake  that  it  can- 
not be  taught  there  without  the  hazard  of  exciting  a  dan- 
gerous fermentation.  Instead  of  this,  we  are  not  aware 
of  a  likelier  instrument  than  a  judicious  course  of  eco- 
nomical doctrine,  for  tranquillizing  the  popular  mind,  and 
removing  from  it  all  those  delusions  which  are  the  main 
causes  of  popular  disaffection  and  discontent.  We  are 
fully  persuaded  that  the  understanding  of  the  leading 
principles  of  economical  science  is  attainable  by  the  great 
body  of  the  people,  and  that  when  actually  attained  it 


ON   MECHANIC   SCHOOLS  339 

will  prove  not  a  stimulant,  but  a  sedative  to  all  sorts  of 
turbulence  and  disorder;  more  particularly  that  it  will 
soften  and  at  length  do  away  those  unhappy  and  malig- 
nant prejudices  which  alienate  from  each  other  the  vari- 
ous orders  of  the  community,  and  spread  abroad  this  salu- 
tary conviction  that  neither  government,  nor  the  higher 
classes  of  the  state,  have  any  share  in  those  economical 
distresses  to  which  every  trading  and  manufacturing  na- 
tion is  exposed ;  but  that,  in  fact,  the  high  road  to  the  se- 
cure and  permanent  prosperity  of  laborers  is  through  the 
medium  of  their  own  sobriety  and  intelligence  and  virtue. 

But,  in  confirmation  of  this  our  sentiment,  we  must  go 
somewhat  into  detail,  and,  in  so  doing,  shall  have  to  de- 
scribe the  rapid  sketch  of  what  we  deem  to  be  a  right 
course  of  popular  economics. 

It,  in  the  first  place,  can  be  made  abundantly  obvious 
to  the  general  understanding,  that  the  price  of  an  article 
has  a  certain  and  necessary  dependence  on  the  two  ele- 
ments of  demand  and  supply. 

[Here  is  a  repetition  of  his  former  teachings:  that  if 
the  supply  of  labor  is  small,  in  relation  to  demand  for 
laborers,  the  price  of  wages  will  certainly  rise;  that  the 
rise  in  the  price  of  an  article  or  service  shows  where  that 
article  or  service  is  most  needed  by  the  community ;  that 
utmost  freedom  of  competition  will  secure  the  interests 
of  all  classes.] 

The  exemplification  of  this  last  doctrine,  in  which  the 
attendants  of  a  mechanic  school  have  the  greatest  interest, 
is  that  which  regards  the  price  of  labor.  It  is  not  a  tangi- 


340  CHRISTIAN   AND   CI\IC    ECONOMY 

ble  commodity,  but  liable  to  the  same  laws  of  variation  in 
price  with  every  other  commodity  which  is  brought  to 
market,  or  which  can  be  made  in  any  way  the  subject  of  a 
bargain.  It  is  exposed  to  the  fluctuations  of  a  greater  or 
a  less  demand,  and  it  might  be  furnished  at  a  greater  or 
less  rate  of  supply.  The  laborers  of  our  land  are  the  sell- 
ers of  this  article,  and  it  is  virtually  they  who  fix  and  de- 
termine the  price  of  it.  The  buyers  are  those  who  employ 
them,  and  they  are  not  to  blame  because  of  the  miserable 
price  which  they  give  for  labor,  for  this  is  the  price  at 
which  the  other  party  have  offered  it.  The  true  cause, 
at  any  time,  of  a  depression  in  the  wages,  or  the  price 
of  labor,  is  not  that  masters  have  resolutely  determined 
to  give  no  more,  but  that  servants  have  agreed  to  take  so 
little.  The  infuriated  operatives,  instead  of  looking  to 
capitalists  as  the  cause  of  their  distress,  should  look  at  one 
another.  They  would  have  greatly  more  reason,  at  a  time 
of  well-paid  labor,  to  look  to  capitalists  as  the  cause  of 
their  high  wages,  than  to  look  to  them  as  the  cause  of 
their  low  wages,  at  a  time  of  ill-paid  labor.  In  the  one 
season  it  is  the  overbidding  of  each  other  for  labor,  by 
the  masters,  which  is  the  efficient  cause  of  its  high  prices. 
In  the  other  season,  it  is  the  underselling  of  each  other, 
by  the  laborers,  which  is  the  efficient  cause  of  its  low  price. 
Whatever  be  the  external  complexion,  this  is  the  sub- 
stantial character  of  these  transactions,  and  this  might 
easily  be  made  to  appear  to  the  disciples  of  a  popular 
economic  course,  among  the  foremost  revelations  of  the 
science.  It  is  a  science  through  the  arcana  of  which  the 
ordinary  attendants  on  a  school  of  arts  are  abundantly 


ON   MECHANIC    SCHOOLS  341 

capable  of  being  led,  and  we  should  confidently  look 
for  patience  and  peace  and  charity  as  the  practical  fruits 
of  it.  .  .  . 

There  could,  after  this,  be  explained  the  cause  of  those 
periodic  depressions  which  take  place  in  the  wages  of 
manufacturing  labor,  and  the  way  of  averting  it — even 
by  an  accumulated  capital  in  the  hands  of  workmen. 
And,  even  although  the  economical  lecturer  could  point 
out  no  remedy  for  this  state  of  things,  there  would  be 
a  salutary  and  pacific  influence  in  his  demonstration  of 
the  causes  which  produced  it.  It  is  well  when  workmen 
are  convinced  that  the  low  price  of  labor  is  not  what  they 
at  first  sight  imagine,  the  doing  of  their  proud  oppressors, 
but  the  fruit  of  a  necessity  over  which  masters  have  no 
control.  If  wages  were  at  the  fiat  of  their  employers 
why  are  they  ever  permitted  to  rise  at  all,  and  often  to 
treble  at  one  time  their  amount  at  another?  But  these 
tides  of  fluctuation,  at  one  time  adverse,  and  at  another 
favorable  for  one  or  other  of  the  parties,  are  set  a-going 
by  different  forces  altogether  from  the  arbitrary  will  of 
capitalists,  and  it  must  serve  to  disarm  the  hostility  of  the 
humbler  for  the  higher  classes  when  they  are  made  to 
understand  that  the  ebbs  and  flows  of  a  laborer's  pros- 
perity depend  upon  the  laws  of  a  mechanism  for  which 
their  masters  are  as  little  responsible  as  they  are  for  the 
laws  of  the  planetary  system. 

But  what  should  make  an  acquaintance  with  political 
economy  so  valuable  to  the  working  classes  is  that  a  rem- 
edy can  be  pointed  out.  The  low  price  of  labor  is  as  much 
the  doing  of  the  laborers  themselves  as  the  low  price  of  a 


342  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

commodity  is  the  doing  of  the  dealers,  who,  in  the  case 
of  an  excessive  supply,  undersell  each  other.  Their  only 
relief  is  in  the  limitation  of  the  supply,  and  there  is  pos- 
itively no  other  permanent  or  effectual  relief  for  the  low 
wages  of  labor.  All  that  combination  can  affect  in  this 
way  is  but  partial  and  temporary,  and  it  is  only  by  lessen- 
ing the  proportion  between  the  number  of  laborers  and  the 
demand  for  labor  that  the  working  classes  will  ever  find 
themselves  on  a  stable  and  secure  vantage-ground.  .  .  . 
Now  all  this  might  be  set  forth  with  enough  clear  and 
commanding  evidence  for  the  understandings  of  the  com- 
mon people.  With  all  the  incredulity  they  feel  about  the 
philosophy  of  Malthus,  they  recognize  the  whole  truth 
and  application  of  it  in  particular  trades,  and  when  they 
combine,  as  they  have  often  done,  to  limit  and  restrain 
the  admission  of  apprentices  into  their  own  craft,  they  are 
just  lending  their  testimony  to  the  obnoxious  theory  of 
population.  A  smaller  general  population  will  supply 
fewer  apprentices,  and  this  favorite  object  of  theirs,  and 
which  they  have  tried  to  effectuate  by  forcible  exclusions, 
can  be  rightly  arrived  at  in  no  other  way  than  by  that 
which  the  philosophy  of  Malthus  has  expounded.  And 
here  may  be  exposed  with  effect  the  odious  and  unjust 
character  of  many  of  their  combinations — in  that,  by  dic- 
tating the  number  of  apprentices,  they  are  acting  in  the 
unfair  and  illiberal  spirit  of  monopoly.  They  are  quite 
vehement  against  the  alleged  tyranny  of  masters,  yet,  in 
this  instance,  they  may  well  be  charged  with  having  be- 
come the  tyrants  and  the  oppressors  themselves.  They 
would  enact  corporation  laws  in  their  own  (favor,  and, 


ON   MECHANIC   SCHOOLS  343 

under  the  pretext  of  obtaining  security  against  the  ag- 
gression of  their  hostile  employers,  they  would,  in  fact, 
by  the  restrictions  which  they  propose  upon  the  employ- 
ment, commit  an  act  of  most  glaring  hostility  against  the 
families  of  all  other  workmen  save  their  own.  It  is  thus 
that  each  distinct  trade  would  form  itself  into  its  own  lib 
tie  oligarchy,  and  in  no  possible  way  could  a  system  be 
devised  more  fatal  to  real  liberty  and  more  full  of  annoy- 
ance to  the  general  population.  We  are  confident  that  a 
lecturer  of  any  talent  at  all  might,  upon  this  subject, 
carry  the  most  crowded  amphitheatre  of  plebeian  scholars 
along  with  him.  He  might,  in  the  first  instance,  gain 
their  compliance  with  the  whole  of  Smith's  argument  on 
the  subject  of  free  trade.  He  might  enlist  them  on  the 
side  of  competition,  and  make  them  partake  in  his  own 
indignation  against  the  hatefulness  of  monopoly.  He 
might  thus  prepare  his  way  for  entering  upon  the  subject 
of  combinations,  and,  however  fair  and  innocent  he  might 
allow  them  to  be  in  themselves,  yet,  on  the  strength  of 
the  principles  he  had  just  expounded,  he  might  feel  him- 
self on  high  vantage-ground  for  disarming  them  of  all 
their  evil,  by  denouncing  whatever  is  wrong  or  mischiev- 
ous in  their  practices.  All  the  terror  and  outrage  and 
forcible  exclusion,  which  they  have  at  any  time  directed, 
whether  against  new  apprentices  or  workmen — the  enor- 
mity of  these  he  could  make  quite  palpable  to  the  popular 
understanding,  and  would,  I  am  persuaded,  be  borne  along 
on  the  tide  of  popular  sympathy  when,  in  the  midst  of  his 
applauding  hearers,  he  lifted,  against  dictation  in  all  its 
forms,  the  honest  remonstrances  of  justice  and  liberty, 


344  CHK1STIAN    AND    CIVIC    ECONOMY 

and  advocated  the  general  rights  of  the  population, 
whether  against  the  now  exploded  oppressions  of  the 
statute-book,  or  the  still  sorer  oppression  of  upstart  and 
recently  organized  bodies  among  themselves.  It  is  not 
through  bearing  down  the  passions  by  the  force  of  law, 
but  through  forming  and  enlightening  the  principles  of 
the  commonalty  by  the  force  of  instruction,  that  the  pres- 
ent fermentations  are  to  be  allayed.  And  we  despair  not 
of  the  day  when  the  science  of  political  economy,  instead 
of  being  dreaded  as  the  instrument  of  a  dangerous  excita- 
tion, will  be  found,  like  all  other  truth,  to  be  of  powerful 
efficiency  in  stilling  the  violence  of  the  people. 

On  this  branch  of  the  subject  there  is  one  invaluable 
result  that  might  be  obtained  from  the  demonstrations 
of  a  lecturer,  and  that  is  a  conviction,  on  the  part  of  his 
hearers,  that  pauperism  was,  in  truth,  their  worst  enemy, 
though  their  enemy  in  disguise,  and  that  it  had  a  most 
depressing  effect  on  the  wages  of  labor  and  the  comfort  of 
the  laborers. 

After  having  discussed  the  causes  which  influence 
wages,  the  explanation  of  those  causes  which  influence 
profits  would  lead  to  another  and  a  most  interesting  branch 
of  a  popular  course.  And  here  it  must  be  obvious  how 
easy  it  were,  on  the  strength  of  a  few  plain  and  intelligible 
simplicities,  to  infuse,  even  into  the  hearts  of  workmen,  a 
spirit  of  candor  and  of  conciliation  toward  their  employers. 
More  particularly  could  they  be  made  to  apprehend  how 
impossible  it  is,  in  a  state  of  freedom,  for  profits  to  sub- 
sist, during  any  length  of  time,  at  a  higher  rate  than 
they  ought  to  do.  When  profits  are  high,  capital  accumu- 


ON   MECHANIC   SCHOOLS  345 

lates,  and  when  capital  is  accumulated,  profits  fall. 
Again,  when,  in  virtue  of  some  accidental  influence,  prof- 
its are  very  unequal,  so  as  to  be  unreasonably  high  in  one 
trade,  there  is,  in  a  state  of  liberty,  a  rush  of  capital  from 
all  other  trades,  so  as  to  bring  all  down  to  a  general  level. 
In  this  increase  of  capital,  and  competition  of  capitalists, 
laborers  will  at  length  be  made  to  perceive  that  their  se- 
curity lies,  and  that,  if  they  so  far  respect  themselves,  as 
that  their  high  standard  of  enjoyment  shall  have  the  in- 
fluence already  explained,  in  restraining  the  increase  of 
population,  a  high  wage  for  work  will  be  the  inevitable 
consequence,  and  such  a  wage  as  is  alike  independent, 
either  of  illegal  enactments  or  of  illegal  combinations.  It 
would  have  been  greatly  more  gratifying  to  us  had  the 
legislature  not  felt  it  necessary  to  assume  even  the  sem- 
blance of  hostility  to  the  working  classes.  Certain  it  is 
that  no  real  hostility  is  felt,  and  that,  even  if  it  were,  it 
would  be  wholly  ineffectual.  It  could  not  depress  the 
wages  of  labor  a  single  farthing  beneath  the  rate  at  which 
it  would  have  settled,  in  virtue  of  those  economic  laws  over 
which  the  government  of  a  country  has  no  control.  .  .  . 
It  is  thus  that  without  any  effort,  certainly  without  any 
combined  effort,  and  without  even  their  looking  for  it, 
there  may,  purely  by  a  change  of  general  habit,  on  the 
part  of  our  workmen,  be  a  gradual  but  sure  elevation  in 
the  price  of  their  labor.  Capitalists  cannot,  though  they 
would,  long  realize  an  extravagant  profit  at  the  expense 
of  wages.  The  same  competition  among  laborers  which 
brings  down  wages  operates  also  among  capitalists  to  bring 
down  profits.  What  laborers  have  to  do  is  to  slacken  the 


346  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

former  competition  by  keeping  down  the  supply  of  labor- 
ers, and  leave  the  latter  competition  to  operate.  Let  them 
but  restrain  the  increase  of  population,  and  then  make 
their  harvest  of  the  increase  of  capital.  Masters,  however 
willing,  have  it  not  in  their  power  to  realize,  for  any  time, 
an  excess  of  profits  to  the  prejudice  of  the  servants;  for 
excess  of  profits  gives  rise  to  the  exuberance  of  capital, 
and  so  to  a  keener  competition  for  more  laborers.  Other 
capitalists  will  plant  themselves  in  their  neighborhood, 
and,  either  by  outbidding,  wrest  from  them  their  work- 
men, or  force  them  to  give  a  higher  wage  than  before. 
There  is  no  organization  of  laborers  required  to  bring 
about  this  result — nothing,  in  fact,  but  that  higher  style  of 
comfort  and  decency,  which  it  is  the  effect  both  of  Chris- 
tian and  common  education  to  spread  over  the  land.  The 
foolish  but  impotent  outbreakings  of  the  last  year  will 
end  in  no  permanent  result  whatever.  A  busy  process  of 
moral  and  mental  culture  would,  in  a  very  few  years,  tell, 
and  permanently  tell,  on  the  condition  of  our  general 
peasantry.  The  market  is  overstocked  with  capital.  Let 
not  the  advantages  of  this  to  the  working  classes  be  neu- 
tralized by  the  market  being  also  overstocked  with  labor. 
Then,  instead  of  men  seeking  after  masters,  we  shall  have 
masters  seeking  after  men.  Instead  of  workmen  under- 
selling their  labor,  we  shall  have  capitalists  overbidding 
for  it.  For  this  blissful  consummation  workmen  do  not 
need  to  step  abroad  and  form  themselves  into  grotesque 
committees,  and  frame  laborious  articles,  and  make  their 
cunning  inventions  of  sign  and  countersign.  They  will 
gain  nothing  by  all  this  so  long  as  they  suffer  them- 


ON   MECHANIC    SCHOOLS  347 

selves  to  be  oppressed  by  the  weight  of  their  own 
numbers. 

This  [gain  of  workmen  by  restricting  supply]  we 
should  rejoice  in  as  a  consummation  devoutly  to  be 
wished.  It  were  a  great  economic  revolution  brought 
about  by  the  peaceful  operation  of  moral  instruments. 
Laborers  would  share  more  equally  with  landholders  and 
traders  than  before,  insomuch  as  wages  would  bear  a 
higher  proportion  both  to  rent  and  profit.  The  social 
fabric  would  still  have  its  orders  and  its  gradations  and 
its  blazing  pinnacles.  But  it  would  present  a  more  ele- 
vated basis.  At  least,  the  ground-floor  would  be  higher, 
while,  in  the  augmented  worth  and  respectability  of  the 
people,  it  would  have  a  far  deeper  and  surer  foundation. 

One  great  object  of  a  wisely  conducted  economic  school, 
whose  presiding  spirit  would  be  that  of  loyalty  to  the 
state  and  love  to  the  population,  were  to  labor  well  the 
proposition,  that  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  master  manu- 
facturers to  realize,  for  any  length  of  time,  any  undue 
advantage  over  their  workmen.  And  here  it  might  be 
well  to  expound  the  relation  which  there  is  between  the 
profit  of  capital  and  the  interest  of  money,  after  which 
the  fall  of  interest  might  be  alleged  as  affording  patent 
exhibition  of  the  universal  decline  that  has  taken  place  in 
profits.  This  would  lead  to  some  other  cause  for  any  de- 
pression in  the  wages  of  operatives  than  the  extravagant 
gains  of  their  employers,  and  would  enable  even  the  home- 
liest of  the  disciples  to  perceive  that  they  are  deprived  of 
the  advantage  which  they  might  have  gotten  from  the 
competition  of  a  now  greatly  increased  capital,  just  be- 


348  CHRISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

cause  it  was  outdone  by  the  stronger  competition  of  a  still 
more  greatly  increased  population.  In  other  words,  that 
it  was  an  advantage  of  which  the  population  had  deprived 
themselves.  At  all  events  the  capitalists  are  quite  inno- 
cent. They  cannot  help  themselves  as  the  laborers  can. 
It  is  well  for  the  spread  of  peace  and  charity  among  the 
working  classes  that  they  should  be  delivered  from  the 
false  imagination  that  their  masters  are  their  oppressors. 
And  it  is  further  well  for  the  spread  among  them  of 
virtuous,  temperate,  and  elevated  habits,  that  they  should 
be  thoroughly  possessed  with  the  true  doctrine  of  wages, 
that  they  are  themselves  their  own  deadliest  oppressors, 
and  that  without  the  co-operation  of  their  own  moral  en- 
deavors, no  benevolence  on  the  part  of  the  affluent,  and  no 
paternal  kindness  or  care  on  the  part  of  their  rulers  can 
raise  them  from  the  degradation  into  which  a  reckless  or 
unprincipled  peasantry  shall  have  fallen. 

It  is  needless,  at  present,  to  inquire  how  much  farther 
mechanics  could  be  raised  in  the  scale  of  doctrine  and 
information,  on  the  subject  of  economical  science.  This 
would  better  be  ascertained  afterward.  But  we  are  thor- 
oughly persuaded  that  these  few  elementary  truths,  along 
with  their  obvious  and  popular  applications  which  we 
have  now  specified,  could  not  only  be  received  by  the 
popular  understanding,  but  would  go  far  to  dissipate  all 
those  crudities  of  imagination  which  excite  the  fiercest 
passions  of  the  vulgar,  and  are,  in  fact,  the  chief  elements 
of  every  popular  effervescence.  To  make  the  multitude 
rational  we  have  only  to  treat  them  as  if  they  were  fit 
subjects  for  being  discoursed  with  rationally.  Now  this, 


ON   MECHANIC   SCHOOLS  349 

in  reference  to  the  great  topics  of  misunderstanding  be- 
tween them  and  their  employers,  has  scarcely  ever  yet 
been  done,  and  the  experiment  remains  to  be  made,  of 
holding  conference  with  the  people  on  the  great  principles 
of  that  economic  relation  in  which  they  stand  to  the  other 
orders  of  society.  We  anticipate  nothing  from  such  a 
process  but  a  milder  and  more  manageable  community, 
and  feel  confident  that  the  frankest  explanations  of  the 
mechanic  teacher  would  be  received  by  his  scholars  in  the 
spirit  of  kindness.  He  may  be  in  no  dread  of  the  ut- 
most explicitness,  or  lest  those  truths,  which  bear  severely 
either  upon  the  sordidness  or  the  violence  of  the  people, 
should  fall  unwelcomely  upon  their  ears.  They  will  bear 
to  be  told  both  of  the  worthlessness  of  pauperism,  and  the 
gross  injustice  of  those  workmen  who  would  infringe  on 
the  liberty  of  their  fellows.  Even  those  truths  which  go 
to  vindicate  their  masters,  and  which  look  hardly  or  re- 
proachfully upon  the  operatives,  ought  in  no  way  to  be 
withheld  from  them. 

We  affirm  that  reason  will  make  anything  palatable  to 
the  lower  orders;  and,  if  only  permitted  to  lift  her  voice 
in  some  cool  place,  as  in  the  classroom  of  a  school  of  arts, 
she  will  attain  as  firm  authority  over  the  popular  mind 
as  she  wields  now  within  the  walls  of  Parliament.  And 
political  economy,  the  introduction  of  which  into  our 
popular  courses  has  been  so  much  deprecated,  will  be 
found  to  have  pre-eminence  over  the  other  sciences  in  act- 
ing as  a  sedative,  and  not  as  a  stimulant,  to  all  sorts  of 
turbulence  and  disorder.  It  will  afford  another  example 
of  the  affinity  which  subsists  between  the  cause  of  popular 


350  CHKISTIAN   AND   CIVIC    ECONOMY 

education  and  that  of  public  tranquillity.  Of  all  the 
branches  of  that  education  there  is  none  which  will  con- 
tribute more  to  the  quiescence  of  the  multitude  than  the 
one  for  whose  admittance  into  our  mechanic  schools  we 
are  now  pleading.  They  will  learn  from  it  what  be  the 
difficulties  by  which  the  condition  of  the  working  classes 
is  straitened,  and  how  impossible  it  is  to  obtain  enlarge- 
ment therefrom  while  they  labor  under  a  redundancy  of 
numbers.  It  will  at  least  help  to  appease  their  discontent 
when  given  to  understand  that  with  this  redundancy,  any 
solid  or  stable  amelioration  of  their  circumstances  is  im- 
practicable; and  that  without  this  redundancy  the  ame- 
lioration would  follow  of  itself,  and  that  to  bring  this 
about,  the  countenance  of  legislators,  and  the  combination 
of  laborers,  were  alike  unnecessary.  The  lessons  of  such 
an  institution  would  be  all  on  the  side  of  sobriety  and 
good  order.  They  would  at  length  see  that  for  the  suf- 
ficiency of  their  own  state,  themselves  were  alone  responsi- 
ble, and,  after  bidding  adieu  to  all  their  restlessness,  they 
would  be  finally  shut  up  to  that  way  of  peace  and  of  pru- 
dence, by  which,  and  by  no  other,  they  can  reach  a  secure 
independence. 


FINIS 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACIL 


A     000108058     9 


